A Tribute to Joel Kovel

Below we reprint an article on psychoanalysis and Marxism from the first issue of Free Associations written by Joel Kovel, who was a member of our board of editors from the first issue. Kovel passed away earlier this year. He and I were classmates at Yale from 1953 until 1957. We both came from modest backgrounds and held full scholarships. He was from a small town in Long Island, and I was from a suburb of Dallas, Texas. Both came from lower middle class backgrounds with sternly religious fathers - Jewish in his and Presbyterian in mine. I lapsed into agnosticism, while, after many decades, he converted to Christianity under the influence of Central American rebels and a black Manhattan Episcopalian.

We moved in the same leftish circles at Yale, ones that developed over the years into the US New Left, but he was among the intellectual elite, while I was a fellow traveler. When we met up again in England, by which time he was a psychoanalyst and I was a radical scientist working on the history if ideas about the brain and Darwin. I was soon a prolific radical publisher - Free Association Books - and he was the successful author of several radical books (listed below). I published a number of books by him and reprinted some others. We also made a television documentary together in opposition to nuclear weapons.

Then we fell out. He wrote to say that he wanted to move up-market and make some big bucks. I felt badly let down. A couple of years later his agent came to see me and attempted to make peace. The posh publisher had treated him badly, and he wanted to return to the fold. I was then in no mood. I changed my mind a few weeks ago only to get a response from his wife that he was gravely ill in hospital. He died a few days later of pneumonia and autoimmune encephalitis, and I very much regret my delay in accepting his penitence. It is clear from a large number of admiring obituaries that he is widely mourned. The New York Times had often been unkind to him, but they