You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The writing of memoirs is inextricably tied to the ability to look ahead, but also to look backward, to confront change and the progression by which younger generations will overtake and replace us, as teachers, as academic leaders, and as the analysts and supervisors of our trainees.
Several years ago I attended a meeting at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute to celebrate and appreciate the retirement of a number of older analysts. It was the first time in my memory that such a sendoff had occurred. Each of these colleagues was spoken about with appreciation and gratitude. As I left, I realized that, for the first time, our organization was able to say goodbye to aging friends and colleagues. Our analytic community seemed to have matured to the extent that we could finally confront together the reality of separation and eventual death. We had become able to mourn as a group. However, this implied that, until that time, we had been avoiding this in our communal past.
Our ability to mourn together allows us to more robustly allow our future educational leaders to replace us, and at an earlier time than in the past. As the lists of new names taking on important roles in our local and national organizations are published, it is important that our experienced educators impart what they have learned to those who will replace them, and that all of us share in this process.
The authors in this issue have shown us what they have accomplished in their careers, and most have described how their interest in analysis and in their specific projects developed. They have also told us about what they have learned over the years, and those thoughts may guide others: what they liked and appreciated; what disappointed them; and what may have surprised or been revealed to them.
As an example, Randy Paulsen arrived at his leadership role with a sense of being an outsider: outside the Mormon church as the child of “apostate” parents who had left the church; outside as a practici