Dancing with Jim Grotstein

Jim Grotstein, M.D., was my teacher, mentor, supervisor, and dear friend. He was a brilliant and talented psychoanalyst who authored numerous books and hundreds of papers on the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. He died on May 30, 2015; he was 89 years old.

I first met Jim in 1997. I was in my first year of psychoanalytic training at PINC and he was teaching a weekend class. I remember three things about that long and fortuitous weekend. I remember him listening to a fellow candidate's case presentation and how stunned I was by how he listened, line by line, to the unconscious, primitive communication from the patient. His translations rang so true, they were just right, and I was profoundly moved by both the precise nature of his interpretations and by the warmth and care he showed toward the patient. I knew instantly that I wanted to learn how to listen — just like that. I remember our class taking him to lunch on that first day and that he ordered an entire plate of tomatoes — that was it, his entire lunch. We all stared at the plate and he said, “I just really like tomatoes”!

Back in the classroom that afternoon, the air conditioning went on and we could not figure out how to shut it off. I was freezing and he noticed. He took his suit coat jacket from the back of his chair and put it around my shoulders. At first I told him that I didn't need it and that I was fine, but he said, “I insist!” Feeling much terror, I reluctantly received his offer. Dr. Grotstein had no way of knowing that, a few weeks prior to our class, I had been caught in a powerful fantasy (in my own analysis at the time) of needing to have my analyst's jacket to wrap around me. I never did get that jacket, but there I was, a week later, with Jim's jacket/mentor arms wrapped around me keeping me warm and holding me steady. Thus began our 18-year-long dance.

Jim became my supervising analyst through PINC. He lived in L.A. and I lived in the Bay Area. Our supervision was conducted via telephon