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Jerry was my analyst for 21 years. Under his guidance, I left the acting profession and graduated from social-work school. I married, had two children, and began a private psychotherapy practice. I lost both of my parents, survived cancer, and began a training program at a psychoanalytic institute. Through all of these life changes, Jerry was there.
I had come to know Jerry as an orderly person. His clothes were well-worn and casual and his shirts were starched. He kept his office clean and well-organized, with current issues of magazines neatly arranged on a table. Jerry was conscientious about time and religious about beginning and ending sessions punctually. He had a talent for seamlessly ushering one person out of his office and the next person into his office in fewer than 30 seconds. In that way, each person was still within his or her 45-minute hour.
He had arranged his office hours according to New York City's alternate side of the street parking regulations. He would stake out a parking spot on the street near his office and then read The New York Times while waiting in his car for his parking spot to become legal. He knew the deli guy on the corner and the homeless man who trolled the street. He immersed himself in psychoanalytic theory and began to write a book. He gained weight, grew his hair, which was turning silver, and