Lucy LaFarge (1948–2025)

Lucy Bergson LaFarge died on February 20, 2025. Faced with a recurrence of cancer only months after the most painful loss of her son, the acclaimed novelist Paul La Farge, Lucy had resolved to pursue her treatment with optimism and to make the most of what remained of her life with fortitude, as Paul had done. Stepping away from her position as Editor in Chief at the Quarterly, a role she had embraced only three years earlier with her characteristic mix of enthusiasm, diligence, and creativity, was another loss; but those who knew Lucy best were not surprised by her decision to focus her remaining energy on the patients she was still analyzing and on making the most of her time with her husband, Richard Zimmer, and their beloved Labradoodle, YoFi. Lucy was widely known to be an insatiable and discerning reader. Her love of literature was a solace, with many of her conversations with friends during this time centered on soliciting book recommendations and comparing opinions about the latest novels. At all times, she was shadowed by YoFi, the most recent, the most devoted, and perhaps even the best of the best in the long line of Lucy’s and Rick’s very good dogs.

Lucy Ann Bergson was born in New York City on September 3, 1948, the youngest of three daughters of Abram Bergson and Rita Macht Bergson. Her father was an internationally renowned economist and Sovietologist as well as a professor at Columbia University, where years later Lucy herself would join the faculty and become a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Her mother was a school psychologist. When Lucy was young, the family moved to Cambridge where her father joined the faculty at Harvard. A precocious and creative child, Lucy’s interest in psychoanalytic thinking was nurtured by an early acquaintance with Eleanor Galenson, whose brother was a colleague of Lucy’s father.