Marian Tolpin Eulogy1

When Joe Lichtenberg invited me to read the obituary I prepared for our Web site, I wondered how I could adapt it and make it more suitable for a luncheon group. Sitting in my office, immersed in sad feeling, I suddenly realized that the very last thing we should do to honor Marian's memory would be to have a moment of silence. Marian was serious and scholarly, but she wasn't the silent type! Rather, let me suggest, if you wish to honor Marian's memory, speak of her today or speak to someone here who knew her personally, and carry the spirit embodied in those words into your life. It's fitting that we speak of Marian Tolpin, for, as those of you who have previously attended these meetings remember, Marian was a highly visible figure whose fabulous, gravelly, Chicago-accented voice was instantly recognizable to everyone. That voice, the voice I fell in love with when I first heard her speak at a meeting in 1980, before I was really able to understand much of what she had to say, will be with me forever.

Nationally and internationally prominent psychiatrist–child psychiatrist–psychoanalyst, Marian Tolpin, M.D. died peacefully at her home in Glencoe, Illinois on June 10 after a valiant battle with lung disease. The American Psychoanalytic Association was about to name her the Psychoanalytic Woman Scholar for 2009. Dr. Tolpin was a faculty member and training and supervising analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical

School, and a faculty member and supervising analyst at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York City. In addition to being a founding member of the International Council for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, she served on the editorial committee of The Annual of Psychoanalysis, on the editorial board of Progress in Self P