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My condolences to Rachel, Erik, Karl, Josh, and their families.
I knew Henri (and I've known his family) for more than 50 years.
Henri was my first psychoanalytic mentor. Back when I was in high school, he was already encouraging my interest in Freud and psychoanalysis, and he was already inspiring me—as he inspired and intrigued so many others—with his passionate interest in early child development, aggression in children, and education for parenting. When I was 17, he invited me to be an observer at his Mahlerian mother-infant observational research project. And Henri and Rachel encouraged and supported me many times and in many ways ever since.
Today Henri is widely known to an international readership for his work on prejudice and intolerance. But among those who knew Henri personally, he stands as an exemplar of hope, courage, warmth, love, and resilience. Book after book, lecturing and teaching all over the world, he remained devoted to his patients until the very end of his life.
But I want to tell you what's touched me most, more than all that, which certainly would have been enough.
When troubles with a child of my own came my way, I turned to Henri. All along, Henri and Rachel listened to my anxieties, they took in my pain and frustration, my sense of narcissistic injury, my guilt, my feelings of inadequacy. They comforted me. They supported me. They stood by me for years and years—for decades really. They believed in my goodness—more than I did.
This was Henri's special gift to me: he believed in my goodness.
Nathan Kravis1,2
1Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York, USA
2Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center, New York, New York, USA