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Dr. Jacob Arlow was a unique and legendary figure in the international and North American psychoanalytic communities. A small number of psychoanalysts have achieved lasting recognition for
their outstanding work in their field, but one wonders if there are any at all who ever excelled as broadly as Jack did.
First and foremost, he was a master clinician, supervisor, and teacher. Therefore, he became a widely sought-after consultant and panelist. He was a brilliant theoretician and coauthored with Charles Brenner, his lifelong friend, the groundbreaking book, Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory . His clinical papers became a model for a generation of psychoanalysts because of his distinctive ability to link his theoretical views with clinical documentation. More than any other single analyst, he refined and clarified the central role of unconscious fantasy in pathogenesis. With Dr. Brenner, he pioneered in the clarification of the immensely important distinction between the prior topographic and the then-still-emerging structural model. Freud's announcement of this distinction in 1926 awaited Jack's rigorous explanations before the analytic community could more fully appreciate the difference between decoding unconscious symbols and therapeutically investigating the motives for the patient's defenses.
He made major contributions to the literature of applied psychoanalysis. His essay “Ego Psychology and the Study of Mythology” remains a seminal contribution, and his interests in this area extended to religious topics, film, and literature. He made major contributions to the topics of psychoanalytic education and supervision. His work on empathy is read to this day, and it was Jack who said: “An analyst must have a tough mind and a soft heart” (Arlowl986).
Ultimately, his bibliog