James J. Putnam

Among the first pieces of news to reach us after the raising of the barrier separating us from the Anglo-Saxon countries comes the painful report of the death of Putnam, the President of the great pan-American psycho-analytic group. He lived to be over seventy-two years old, remained intellectually active to the end, and died peacefully of heart-failure during his sleep in November 1918. Putnam, who was until a few years ago Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard University, was the great support of psycho-analysis in America. His numerous theoretical works (a few of which made their first appearance in the Internationale Zeitschrift) have, by their clarity and wealth of ideas, and by the decisively favourable line they took, contributed immensely towards creating the high esteem which psycho-analysis now enjoys in America both in psychiatric teaching and in public opinion. His example may have been no less effective. He was universally respected for his unimpeachable character, and it was recognized that he was influenced only by the highest ethical considerations. His closer personal acquaintances could not escape the conclusion that he was one of those happily compensated people of the obsessional type for whom what is noble is second nature and for whom any concession to unworthiness has become an impossibility.

J. J. Putnam's personal appearance was made familiar to European analysts through the part he took in the Weimar Congress of 1911. The editor of the Zeitschrift hopes to include in its next issue a portrait of our honoured friend and a detailed appreciation of his scientific achievements.2