When Justin Krent died on August 31, 1990, an influential voice within The American was stilled. During his last year in office as Chairman of the Board on Professional Standards, Jay wanted to develop the structure and strategies to maintain our high standards during these rapidly changing times. And he wanted to resolve the divisiveness within the Board that threatens to sap its vitality. Jay was by nature a quiet and unassuming man. But by virtue of his long service on Board committees, he was instrumental in framing many of our current debates. His impact will be felt by the Association for a number of years to come.
Jay was not a novice in confronting and resolving conflicts within organizations. As a young training analyst, he was a key player during a time of great ferment in Cleveland. During the late 60s, the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute began a struggle to become an institute independent of the Department of Psychiatry of the Case Western Reserve Medical School. It was a rough fight, lasting several years. That history was chronicled by Jay and presented at an Oral History Workshop of The American in 1977. He said, “The Cleveland experience has been one of conflict, accomplishment, disappointments, suffering, bitterness, pleasure, and cooperation.”
When the new institute left the Department of Psychiatry, Jay was its first Secretary, succeeding Brian Bird the next year (1968) as its Chairman. He was reelected annually for the next 20 years. Arthur Rosenbaum, Cleveland's current Chairman, emphasized that Jay always insisted on full, frank, and public discussion of his institute's dissensions. His leadership was firm and fair through those two decades. In gratitude for his long years of generous service, his institute has just named its library the Justin Krent Library.
Jay was born in Cincinnati on September 14, 1923, the younger of two children. (He was visiting his sister, Paula, at the time of his fatal cerebral hemorrhage last summer.) Jay grew up during the lean Depression years. After attending public schools in Cincinnati, Jay entered the University of Cincinnati. With World War II in progress, Jay applied to and was accepted by the U.S. Army ASTP program for accelerated matriculation through the undergraduate program of the University of Cincinnati and later its medical school. He served in the Army briefly during World War II and returned for two more years of active duty during the Korean War. Evelyn Weissmann and Jay were married in San Antonio in 1953.
Jay interned at what is now the University Hospital of Cincinnati, where he became interested in psychiatry and psychoanalytic perspectives. Milton Rosenbaum, knowing of this interest, advised Jay to consider the psychiatric residency Douglas Bond was developing in Cleveland. Bond, with the help of Anna Freud, had persuaded Drs. Anny and Maurits Katan to leave the Netherlands and come to the medical school as professors of psychoanalysis. Jay found what he wanted and accepted a residency. He remained very active in the Department of Psychiatry for many years, serving as director of its outpatient clinic from 1953 to 1968.
There Jay developed a reputation as an excellent teacher and a caring doctor. He committed himself to the care of the poor and the chronically psychotic patients of his outpatient department. He presided over a daily conference that reviewed every patient's treatment individually.
Jay began working for the Association in the same year he became Chairman of his institute's Education Committee. He would serve the Association in some capacity continuously for the next 25 years. He was first appointed to the Committee on Institutes in 1966 and completed a second three-year term between 1971 and 1975.
I believe that Jay's most lasting impact on the Association resulted from his long tenure on the two committees that review applications for certification and membership. He was appointed to the Membership Committee in 1975, before there was a Certification Committee. When the Certification Committee was established in 1977, Jay was its first Chairman. For the next seven years, Jay presided over this committee and codified its standards and procedures: the case write-up requirements and the oral interviews with applicants. Jay refined to a high art the feedback given to institute representatives for deferred applications. These meetings, and the attendance of guest visitors at the committee's discussions, were very important to Jay. He hoped to demystify the way in which Certification reached its decisions.
Jay's last committee appointment, before his election as Chairman of the Board, was to the Committee on Nonmedical Clinical Training. In extending waivered training to nonmedical applicants, Jay believed that the Association's high standards had to be upheld. From his long experience on Certification, Jay was able to read clinical case reports with an uncanny sense. He became a strong advocate for requiring written material with the waiver applications. Jay had concluded that only careful study of case reports could confirm the requirement of clinical excellence by applicants for waivers.
Jay assumed the office of Chairman as the lawsuit was finally being settled. He was well aware of the moratorium that had been placed on the Association's disagreements, and I don't think he was fully prepared (nor were any of us) for the sudden eruption of conflict on several fronts. As he was with the old troubles in Cleveland, he was determined to find reasonable and just solutions to the problems. This search distracted him from working to fulfill his vision as Chairman, and he was testy about this. Yet Jay never lost his love for the Association or for the Board for which he had so long labored. One of his favorite tasks during the Association's meetings were the Monday visits to Board committees. He often was impressed, at times dazzled, by the brilliance and reasoned intelligence that informed the committee's discussions. He was proud of them and proud to be counted as one of them.
Mrs. Evelyn Krent sees a remarkable kinship between the way Jay worked as an analyst and a leader and the manner in which he approached another great love, gardening. “Jay's way was unique,” Mrs. Krent observed. “If it took longer, he didn't care. He cared about the process: the seeds, the germination, the seedlings and the final planting in the flower beds.” Mrs. Krent further reflected, “I believe that's the way he approached analysis. He believed it was a growth process that took time, and he was a very patient man. He really believed in analysis, not only as a way of understanding behavior but as a method of helping people.” We in the Association shall miss Jay and mourn for him.