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I had the pleasure of getting to know Elliott Jaques and his wife, Kathryn Cason, over the course of several visits to his Gloucester, Massachusetts home. We were introduced by Professor Douglas Kirsner, who initiated the meetings in light of the strong mutual interest Elliott and I shared in the functioning of complex social systems. I quickly began to look forward to these visits, which were a forum for Elliott to espouse his latest ideas, often those concerning complex management systems. Elliott had old-world courtesy, manners, and hospitality. We were housed in a old inn, which served the best lobster that I have ever eaten, freshly caught from multiple family traps on the waterfront, just outside the hotel. Elliott even had his own traps, as each home-owner had two traps by city ordinance. When he had guests, Elliott held court in a most humble yet aristocratic manner, in a townhouse full of all the things of importance to him, prominent among them an etching of Melanie Klein, his psychoanalyst.
The complexity of Elliott's break with psychoanalysis in 1952 is for others to discuss, but it is noteworthy that in this, his last book, he on more than one occasion engages Kleinian ideas, to bolster the fundamental contributions of this theory of the life and behavior of living organisms. So he comes full circle in an apparent rapprochement with psychoanalysis, a field he spoke of with some bitterness in our conversations. I for one am glad to not have been brought up as a psychoanalyst in the British Society, with its various schools one must chose from, even to this day, to have any sort of voice or status in the field.
I think it hurt Elliott that his ideas, which often questioned the importance of psychology in dysfunctional management systems, ostracized him, he felt, from the very field of study that marked the beginning of his career. Remember