Seymour L. Lustman (1920-1971)

This year began on a sad and lonely note, the mourning for Dr Seymour L. Lustman who died suddenly in a sailing accident in Maine on the morning of 5 August 1971.

A training and supervising psychoanalyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, Dr Lustman had recently completed terms as President of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society, Secretary of the Board on Professional Standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and as a member of the Editorial Board of its journal, as well as that of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine. He also had been a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies. When he died he was at the height of his scientific career with many leadership roles, including his position as a Councilor-at-Large of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Chairman of Task Force IV on Prevention, Rehabilitation, Research and Manpower of the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children, Chairman of the Committee on Research of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, Editor of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, a member of the Commission on Biology, Ethics and the Law of the Salk Institute, and many other key positions.

Dr Lustman was a leader, scientifically, educationally and clinically. His clear views were often strongly expressed when psychoanalytic and other scientific issues were being discussed. His rigour was never static, always evolving, and regularly carried the hallmark of his brilliance, to appose theory and clinical or direct observation; to frame conceptualizations in which there was a productive reconciliation of what appeared to be contradictory or ambiguously related observations or phenomena.

Dr Lustman received his B.A. in psychology from Northwestern University in 1941. He continued this interest in the military service as a clinical psychologist. His earliest research, started with his Ph.D. thesis, examined in a heuristically illuminating way the