Obituary: Dale Boesky (1930-2021)

I want to write condolence notes

not to your friends

but to the ones

who didn’t know you yet.

Before the laughter and the dinners at Dale’s home in Michigan or at meetings in New York and Paris, before the unquenchable punning and ancient Jewish jokes, there were formality and serious thought and differing points of view.

I met Dale when I joined the Editorial Board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, but I did not come to know him personally until he followed Jack Arlow as Editor-in-Chief. What I then learned was that any time we had an interchange about a manuscript, I always felt I had to stretch to keep up with his thinking. Indeed, as a reviewer, Dale read not only the submitted manuscript, but also the papers listed in its bibliography. Whatever Dale did, he was never superficial. (I recall him smiling and paraphrasing a Peter DeVries line, “Superficially, she was deep, but deep down she was superficial.”)

About a year after his assuming the editorship, I approached Dale and offered to resign. With remarkable frequency, his decisions about submitted manuscripts were the opposite of my recommendation as a reviewer. It was not that I resented his contrary review; rather, that I thought a new

editor should not be burdened by inheriting a reviewer not of his choice. I felt there was no question but that the primary concern for both of us was protection of the Quarterly, the shared treasure we both loved.

Dale was adamant. He stated his strong need to hear differing views, always. Indeed, conceptual challenges were precisely what he wanted. It felt to me like the moment between Rick and Louis at the end of Casablanca: “I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”

Dale’s mind was restless. It was from him that I learned that an understanding is a place where the mind comes to rest. He always caught his breath and stopped long enough to publish his