Notes

A MEMORIAL MEETING FOR DR. A. A. BRILL was held at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, March 30, 1948. Among the tributes to Dr. Brill, was that of Dr. Adolph Stern, President of the Institute. The address of Dr. Sandor Lorand, President of the Society, will be published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. The meeting was largely attended by members and students of the Society and Institute.

DR. STERN:

Brill is a man who it is difficult to envision as having passed from our midst: he was so vibrant, full of interest and the joy of living. I recall my first meeting him in our last year at medical school in 1903. It was a refreshing experience, meeting and getting acquainted with him. We spent some time together, particularly preparing for our final examinations. He visited my conventional and orthodoxly religious home where he was a source of worry to my parents because of his unconventional and irreligious ways. They felt he might not be safe company for me. His positive, self-assertive, confident behavior, his knowledge of philosophy, literature, music, the different kinds of people with whom he associated and was on friendly terms, his sense of humor, his ability to tell of his experiences and good jokes, his gregariousness—these attributes made him an interesting individual. At the time we first met, Brill had been in this country some fourteen years. He was nonetheless characteristically cosmopolitan and remained so for the rest of his life.

The course in psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, consisted of not many lectures in our last year. Our teacher was a man who talked of his patients in an interesting way, teaching us students to understand them as people who have symptoms which in some vague way were connected with their past history. Both Brill and I found these lectures of great interest. Some of us, Brill among them, were influenced by this teaching after we entered the New York State Psych