Donald and His Coat of Many Colors: An Appreciation

Donald Cohen Has Been Much In My Thoughts Since His Death, particularly as I pondered his ending and wondered what my own would be like. I think of him often, during the Education Committee meetings of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute, which we both attended monthly for many years. Memories of Donald come to me whenever I enter this new building. More have been evoked over the past several months as I have been pouring over his many papers on analytic topics in preparation for this talk. That exercise further stimulated thinking about Donald and his fine qualities and talents.

So, I was interested but not particularly surprised that, several weeks ago, when my oldest granddaughter, Hailey, started to tell me about her latest musical infatuation, I once again started to link what she said with memories of Donald. I add parenthetically that Hailey is now seven. For most of the past four years she has been in love with one video musical after another. It all started, as it seems to for many kids these days, with “The Sound of Music.” After an eternity with the von Trapps, her interest shifted to the Disney animated musicals. Currently she is making her way through Shirley Temple films from