Maxwell Gitelson—1902—19651

Never, since the death of Karl Abraham in 1925, has the International Psycho-Analytical Association suffered the loss of its President during his term of office. To everyone who cares for international psycho-analysis the sudden death from a heart attack in February of Maxwell Gitelson must have come as a shock, and as a loss of the feeling of security which depended on the knowledge that our International affairs were in strong, competent hands, which would direct them wisely and prudently. For those of us who knew him there is added a very real sense of personal loss and impoverishment, the loss of a true friend.

Gitelson was born in 1902 in Russia, but came to the United States at an early age. Soon after qualifying in medicine he entered the field of psychiatry; after a year in New York he went to Chicago in 1932, and continued to work there until the end. For a number of years he held important psychiatric posts, and it was not until 1947 that he entered private practice as a psycho-analyst, though he had become a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1942. His outstanding qualities soon brought him to leading posts and responsibilities in the analytic world. From 1952 to 1961 he was Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Psycho-analytic Association, and he became President of that Association in 1955. In 1951 he was elected to the post of Treasurer of the I.P.A., and continued with this rather unpopular job until 1957, when he was elected Vice-President. In 1961 he was elected President of the Association at the Congress in Edinburgh, and presided at the last Congress in Stockholm.

My personal contact with Gitelson began when I joined the Central Executive and met him at Geneva in 1955, he being then Treasurer. In the following year, the year of the Freud Centenary, I was able to observe Gitelson in action at Chicago as President of the American Psychoanalytic Association. I was greatly impressed with the skill an