Marian Tolpin: Memories

It is my sad pleasure to contribute to this issue, so well deserved, dedicated as it is to the memory of Marian Tolpin. Marian was so well-known and so deeply loved by all of us that my words will be a purely personal expression, adding nothing to what we already know and feel, but conveying my own sense of something vital missing from my life.

My friendship with Marian began first with feelings of admiration, and then gratitude. I had heard her present her own ideas and discuss the ideas of others at large meetings of the organization, but my experience of her as a solid, real presence dated from my early membership in the small, private study group that formed around Heinz Kohut and was lead by him. Her knowledge of self psychology, a psychoanalytic framework that I had just recently begun to know and understand, was obvious, as was her enviably close connection to Kohut himself, a figure for whom I felt considerable awe. However, what drew me to Marian most were her more personal qualities of kindness, generosity, and, yes, empathy. She seemed to grasp my feelings of awkwardness, of being less-than, of not belonging, and of not deserving to belong, either, to this august circle. She, more than any other there, extended herself to make me feel welcome. She took my timid attempts to contribute to the dialogue seriously, even when I knew in my heart they were simplistic or mundane, and yet she never made me feel condescended to. She seemed to like and to respect me. I felt I was there in deference to my status as Mort Shane's wife; she seemed to feel I had my own rightful place.

I do not want to give the impression that Marian was all sweet kindness; she was not. She asserted herself strongly in opposition to ideas that seemed useless or just plain wrong to her, and could be insistent, even harsh, in her disagreement. This is a Marian that we can all remember, too, as we listened to her speak from the floor in meetings of the organization. However, des