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Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.
Shakespeare
With shocking suddenness, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl died on December 1, 2011 at the age of 65. In a sign of our times, within hours, her Wikipedia entry recorded the event with brutal finality, even as the news echoed through the networks of relatives, friends, colleagues and students. “Pulmonary embolism, returning from a concert.” A vibrant and rich life seemed transformed in no time into a stream of personal and public tributes. The summing up began, and it continues, but a sense of unreality attends her stunning and abrupt loss. Words pour into the void.
Elisabeth died in medias res (she would have liked the Latin phrase), as she was preparing to celebrate the publication of her latest book, Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children (Yale University Press, 2011). During the previous months the entries in her blog, “Who's Afraid of Social Democracy?” had been arriving on the internet with characteristic regularity, and she was immersed in her latest massive project, a multivolume, definitive edition of the works of D.W. Winnicott. Also yet to come was a book about dreams that symbolize the self and its development, to which she had alluded periodically; and, no doubt, we could have expected the regular gifts of essays and reviews. Her disciplined production of important work was astonishing. Where others would be depleted by the labor of writing, she was like the Biblical burning bush, energized by her own creativity and calling. Her work fills a shelf in my study.
Elisabeth's prolific energies were matched by the enormous generosity that animated her family, friends and professional relationships of all kinds. “Everyone should know