René Spitz's death was timely, considering his age and his recent suffering. He died very much as he lived in the seventeen years I knew him, with integrity, with honesty and with intense curiosity and analysis of his changing psychological state. He had the ability to accept his death and its place in his personal history, and to accept in perspective his role in the history of psychoanalysis. His major objection to his terminal illness was that physical weakness interfered increasingly with his work. Until three months before his death he drove daily to his office at the University of Colorado Medical Center, supervised candidates, taught a continuous case conference, participated actively in both the Denver Society and Denver Institute meetings, and was an invaluable contributor to the seminar on developmental psychobiology. He continued to write extensively and also maintained a voluminous correspondence in at least seven languages. In the last month he continued to save what little energy he had for work and for those who meant most to him. He hated inactivity and gradually became impatient that it was taking him so long to die.
It was both a pleasure and an inspiration to know such an intensely human man with fierce likes and dislikes in everything from food to people to world politics. He lived with a zest that was contagious. He was a Renaissance man in his enthusiasm for new ideas; quite literally he would have liked to know all knowledge, and I'm not sure he ever accepted the impossibility of this.
He had his share of human paradoxes. He was increasingly pessimistic about the fate of the human race at the same time he was optimistic about the fate of those he taught and treated. He read in all areas of science, and concurrently read more science fiction and mystery novels than anyone I have ever known. He fought most with those he cared most about; he was also a friend of unquestioning compassion and loyalty.
He had impressive candor, wisdom and even occasional humor about his dying, yet he was afraid of dying alone, unattended and in pain. About a month before he died he asked me to be quite truthful about how I thought he looked. I told him he looked to me like a very dear dying old Jew. He chuckled and recalled an incident early in his analysis with Freud. René had repeatedly associated to the idea that Freud, then in his late fifties, looked familiar to him, like someone in his family; René mentioned at least half a dozen men in his family whom he felt Freud closely resembled. Freud finally said to René, a bit testily, René thought, “All old Jews look alike.”
I told René he, too, was a very special old Jew. This came as no surprise. He went on to discuss how rich and full his life had been. He felt he had lived the best possible years in history because they had been so thoroughly interesting and rewarding.
He died peacefully in his sleep September 14, 1974. I have lost an extraordinary friend, colleague and teacher. We have lost a man whose enthusiasm was inspiring and who lent invaluable historical perspective to students of psychoanalysis. As with most great teachers, we learned as much from the man himself as from what he taught, though this has indeed been prodigious. Knowing him has been a rare privilege.
Janice Norton Kaufman
Berkeley, California
October 22, 1974