On October 2, 1992, Roy Allan Ginsburg, President of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, died at the age of 48, less than a week after a diagnosis of acute leukemia. His death came as a shock to family, friends, and colleagues.
Roy always exuded warmth and concern for others, a quality felt by his patients along with his professional dedication. He loved meeting new people, and bringing people together. He embodied the idea of inclusiveness, always trying to find ways to connect people, to reach out to the alienated, and constantly renewed his ties to a wide circle of friends. Bright and creative, Roy often brought a new perspective, phrased in everyday language, to clinincal and theoretical discussions. He was an innovator who created organizations and brought new enthusiasm and ideas to existing ones. It is testimony to the wide respect accorded his abilities and personality that he was elected president of his institute and society just five years after graduating. It is particularly tragic that he died only four months into office.
Roy grew up in Brooklyn and did his undergraduate and medical training at Case Western Reserve. During college he was editor of the student newspaper and participated in the Mississippi Summer civil rights action of 1964. Roy trained in psychiatry at the University of Rochester. He moved to Palo Alto as a research fellow in psychiatry in 1975, and in 1976 entered private practice. Graduating from the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute in 1987, he was certified by The American the same year. He served on numerous committees of the San Francisco Institute, and of The American, and sat on the Executive Council from 1990. In 1988 he joined the faculty at San Francisco, and in 1990 became president-elect of the Institute and Society's Board. In that role he was instrumental in expanding the membership's involvement in Institute activities. Roy saw his presidency as a time for enhancing the financial position of the Institute, and for developing programs for academics interested in psychoanalysis.
Shortly after entering practice, Roy joined the clinical faculty of Stanford's Department of Psychiatry. He taught and supervised actively, rising to the rank of associate clinical professor. In 1989 he initiated an Individual Psychotherapy Clinic within the Department, and served as its director until his death. In that position he brought a psychoanalytic perspective to residents and medical students in a way that was understandable and persuasive. Equally important, the clinic provided low-fee psychotherapy patients for candidates in training. Roy also reorganized the introductory course in psychiatry for Stanford medical students, encouraging interest in the doctor-patient relationship and creating excitement about psychiatry as a medical career.
In January 1991 an interdisciplinary conference entitled Psychoanalysis and Culture was held at Stanford in connection with an exhibit of the Freud artifacts and first editions of Freud's writings. Roy was the conference's tireless organizer and, with Paul Robinson and Haskell Norman, author of The Catalogue of Freud Imprints from the Collection of Haskell Norman. At the conference a wide range of internationally known scholars and analysts presented papers on history, art, literature, and philosophy to an audience of over 500; Nancy Ginsburg has taken over the task of editing a volume of these papers to be published by Stanford University Press.
Roy maintained a busy psychoanalytic practice, and was a supervisor and teacher for many therapists in the Palo Alto area. With Robert Harris he wrote “Models of the Mind: Their Role in the Clinical Teaching of Psychotherapy,” which appeared in the American Journal of Psychotherapy. He also published a number of book reviews in psychoanalytic journals. Roy's hobbies included playing jazz piano and jogging. He took joy in every aspect of life and shared that joy with everyone around him. He often joked about the difficulty of keeping all the many plates in his life spinning, but he reveled in the effort and accomplished it all with grace.
Roy Ginsburg is survived by Nancy, his wife of 28 years, by his daughters Robin, Heather, Sara, and Jessica, and by a grandson, Jonathan. His death is a loss not only to them but to his friends and to psychoanalysis. A memorial fund has been established in his name at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute.