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As Interim Editor of Psychodynamic Psychiatry, I have the honor to comment on Richard C. Friedman's extraordinary career. At the time of his death in late March of this year, Richard C. Friedman (RCF) had been Editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis for eight years. During that time, the journal was renamed Psychodynamic Psychiatry and became the first English-language journal in the world about psychodynamic psychiatry. At the time of his death, Dr. Friedman was Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill-Cornell School of Medicine and Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. He was also on the faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and Research Professor at the Derner School of Adelphi University.
RCF was a curious, vigorously intellectual man, filled with ideas for new projects, new questions to answer in psychiatry, always on the lookout for new work that would be of importance to the Psychodynamic Psychiatry community. He was a gifted clinician, whose clinical work is vividly described by a patient with whom he worked for 25 years in a recent New Yorker article, “Obituary for the Analyst: Richard C. Friedman and the Quelling of My Depression” (Solomon, 2020).
RCF was also a charismatic teacher who could explain psychodynamic concepts with clarity and simplicity. I hope that at the panel on RCF's work that the Academy will hold at a future annual meeting, we'll have a chance to discuss his teaching about human sexual behavior and pathology, which was extraordinary.
During his professional career, RCF published two authored books, six edited books, and over 117 papers and chapters. The exact number is unknown since he had not revised his CV for a couple of years. He