At its meeting on Tuesday, December 12, 1978, The Group of Executive Secretaries, on the occasion of its 20th Anniversary, paid tribute to the late Helen Ross and Bertram D. Lewin for their pioneer role in founding the organization GOES by reproducing Dr. Lewin's ‘Introduction’ to “GOES: The First 10 Years 1957-1967.”
“At some time in one's youth, I imagine, everyone has been greeted by an older friend, usually a woman, with ‘My how you have grown.’ Perhaps if one's mother is along, he hears to his embarrassment in an aside, ‘How well he has developed.’
As such an old friend of GOES, I view this youngster not smugly but with sincere wonderment. My, how well you have developed! Hard to believe that ten years ago, when Helen Ross and I were surveying psychoanalytic education and enjoying the favors and kindnesses of Executive Secretaries, GOES was not even a gleam in its parents' eye. I have to include both father and mother as gleamers, owing to modern research. And now GOES has miraculously come of age and is surveying itself.
I compliment you. You grew, you developed for natural and inevitable reasons. Whomever you may know, as a wise child, as parents, and honor by that designation, I should say (as you probably know at this age) that they played a minor potentiating role. Development came from an inner necessity, from the intrinsic growth and energizing hormones. Ten years ago, there were Executive Secretaries, thoughtful and earnest individuals, working out for themselves their isolated destiny. Occasionally they heard indirectly that there were others like themselves but often they had no acquaintance with these colleagues personally. Today, this isolation is inconceivable. In a relatively short time, through talent, intelligence and work, a new very special profession has been created: the office administration of a psychoanalytic institute.
There is no need to outline GOES's embryology and infant development or to portray its mature qualities. This has been done admirably in the text that follows, where the exposition and documentation testify to GOES's multiform excellence and critical self-appraisal. GOES is conscious. In fact, the name is more than a nickname; it provides occasion for interpretation, as follows. GOES is an anagram of EGOS, and to indicate the goal of psychoanalysis, Freud said, “Where Id was let EGOS be.” It is evident that GOES lives up to this lemma and is conscious—if my reasoning is correct. Out of the inspiration from the id came the form and substance of GOES. There is more to this than analytic inference. The data and the evidence are there.
There is a marvelous esprit de corps in GOES. Indeed, in some ways, its members are the core of their respective institutions. With this corps and this core and this esprit, GOES is both cement and communication network (a strange piece of apparatus!); and even more strangely this apparatus lubricates the contacts of the institutes, puts into the serious and streamlined action the ameliorative esprit of neutralized libido.
I leave you to unmix some of the metaphors of this construction. With admiration and affection, I hail GOES and wish its members the continued joy of this important work. I confirm my appreciation of what they are doing for psychoanalytic education. Si vales, ego quoque valeo.“