In the Street, in the Classroom, and in the Psychoanalytic Institute

Thank you for that generous introduction and again for the invitation to come here and speak. I think Wendy’s presentation really sets the stage for what I am going to be speaking about with regard to psychoanalysis in the community. I am going to take you on a personal journey from where I started in this process to where I am today. I think it highlights what I hope will be something that generates interest and discussion, and I would like to begin by thanking the foundations that support the project and, in particular, Julie Lipp who has been with us since the beginning with donations from her family foundation and who is here today. Welcome, Julie, and thank you for coming. We also have with us today our associate director, Kate Romey. I cannot say enough about her contribution to what I am going to speak about; when I refer to some clinical work or an example of something, it usually comes from some area of Kate’s material. This presentation is dedicated to our students and to Marian Tolpin, who was a colleague, mentor, and friend at the Chicago Institute and who knew before her death about what I was doing and got such great pleasure from the idea that I was taking what she had theoretically developed from self psychology out to a small alternative school in Cicero, Illinois. Finally, I lost a friend this week, Dave Mueller, who had hosted a radio show in southwest Michigan. It was because of Dave’s interest in my work in Cicero, and speaking of it on his show, that a version of Project Realize in Saugatuck, Michigan, where I live, began in the high school there.

The journey begins at a big house at the University of Michigan back in 1969. I promised my father when I went off to the University that I would absolutely stay away from politics—and within the first three weeks I got myself arrested and was put on one of those buses for having demonstrated against the war. A group had taken over the administration building and that was my first real interaction with