Joan Fleming, M.D., died peacefully in her sleep Sunday night, August 10, 1980. During the past year she was greatly burdened by her failing health, which rarely left her free of pain. Despite this, she continued to cheerfully assume her teaching and clinical responsibilities with the same dedication and psychoanalytic perceptiveness which had marked her entire professional life.
After graduating from Wellesley College in 1924, she received a master's degree from Oberlin College in 1928. She taught physical education for a number of years before going to medical school at the University of Chicago. Upon obtaining the M.D. degree in 1936, she completed analytic training at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. She joined the Institute's faculty and served as Dean of Education for thirteen years.
Joan “retired” to Denver, Colorado, in July, 1969, as Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Medical School and joined the faculty of the Denver Psychoanalytic Institute, which had just been granted provisional status by the Board on Professional Standards at the Association's annual meeting. It is difficult to overestimate the importance her arrival and the impact that her wealth of experience in psychoanalytic education had on the development of the new institute.
“Retirement” meant continuing the professional roles in which she had clearly established her preeminence nationally, i.e., as training and supervising analyst and as a teacher of theory and clinical practice both of analysis and psychiatry. She also continued her clinical research on parent loss. Her qualities of leadership, integrity, and independence which had served so effectively the Chicago Institute and the Board of Professional Standards continued to characterize her professional activities. She was forth-right in expressing her opinions and seeking an open dialogue, but this was tempered by a sensitivity to and an understanding of the other person.
She was always active in and deeply concerned about the affairs of the Association. She served as Chairman of the Board of Professional Standards and on many committees of the Association. She contributed many scholarly psychoanalytic papers, particularly on psychoanalytic education. The supervisory monograph (1966), which she authored with Dr. Therese Benedek, was a pioneering contribution.
Unquestionably a central core of her identity was as a teacher. She was devoted to her “students” whether beginning candidates or senior colleagues. They always found her teaching an inspiration and a model for identification. She had the capacity to recognize what was core knowledge which needed to be handed on to the next generation. At the same time she was open to new ideas, to experimentation and to testing. One quality which made her teaching so inspiring to her students was her empathy with their learning difficulties and her faith and belief in their capacity to learn and to develop—the psychoanalytic process as applied to learning. Her teaching impacted directly on innumerable psychoanalytic candidates in Chicago and Denver and indirectly on the Association's educational programs due to her continuing dedication to and participation in the activities of the Board of Professional Standards.
She enjoyed a wide circle of friends. Her qualities of warmth, loyalty, concern for and interest in the other person, together with a capacity for mutuality, found immediate acceptance. Her early interest in sports made her an avid sports fan. She enjoyed nothing more than discussing the most recent Bronco game, Monday night baseball, or the latest Wimbledon tennis matches. She was partisan in her enthusiasms, but always gave credit where it was due.
Her many friends and colleagues have lost a truly unique and gifted professional and personal friend. While that loss is particularly poignant for those in Denver who were privileged to share the last decade of her life, their mourning will be shared by the entire psychoanalytic community.
The Denver Institute, together with the Denver Psychoanalytic Society and the Department of Psychiatry are planning a memorial service in her honor later this year at the Health Sciences Center.
Herbert S. Gaskill, M.D.
Denver