Brian Bird was my friend. He died last December after a long illness, and I mourn his loss more than I can say. We met first some thirty-odd years ago as new members of one of the committees of the Board on Professional Standards. From the first moment I liked and admired him. Here was a man who was soft-spoken, yet managed to convey a sense of firm conviction in a few words, often in the form of a well-phrased question that went to the heart of whatever issue we were discussing. Devoid of clichès and empty phrases, he was at the same time capable of a quiet and engaging wit. A quiet, reserved man, he displayed an enviable charm and social presence.
In contrast to the urban types who predominate in our profession, Brian was born and raised in the town of Swan River, Manitoba. His father was a member of the Canadian Parliament. Brian received his medical and psychiatric training in Manitoba before moving to Cleveland, where he received his education in psychoanalysis. Later, as a training analyst at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute, he distinguished himself as a teacher and supervisor, conducting a number of very popular seminars for candidates and graduates. He also served as Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve, where he conducted a valuable study of surgeons that focused on the role of anxiety and denial in their work.
Brian played an important role in The American, where, as in his own Institute, he did much to uphold standards and advance the profession. During my tenure as chair of BOPS, he served as secretary. I so valued his judgment and high standards that for all practical purposes we functioned as co-chairs. As a member of the COPE Study Group on Training Analysis in the early seventies, he was invaluable in helping us avoid the widespread but often mistaken presuppositions that lingered about that arcane subject.
As one of the founding members of the Center for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies (CAPS), Brian helped establish a spirit of scholarly devotion to the science and practice of psychoanalysis. He played a very special role in our discussions in Group One. The rest of us would talk and advance various arguments, not always to the point. Just as we seemed ensnarled in a tangle of obscurities and contradictions, Brian would with a few quiet words bring the issue into focus. Invariably he made good sense, without arrogance and most often with wry humor. Up to his last illness, he remained an active participant in Group One.
Early in his analytic career, he published Talking with Patients, a work that has been reprinted and translated into several languages. It has been used extensively in the teaching of medical students and other mental health professionals, emphasizing as it does the importance of avoiding authoritarian attitudes and treating patients as equals. His 1972 paper, “Notes on Transference: Universal Phenomenon and Hardest Part of Analysis,” has become a classic, and deservedly so, for its incisive view of the most important element in our work.
Brian's interests were by no means limited to psychoanalysis and medicine. Aside from cultivating bonsai trees, he was a practiced figure skater and a sophisticated collector of British drawings and watercolors, Wedgewood china, pewter, Japanese netsukes, and other precious objects. His most notable collection was of Anglo-Saxon coins, which he eventually sold when they became too valuable to hold. He also aroused my admiration and envy by being expert enough to make out his own tax returns.
Together with many of his colleagues, I had the greatest respect for his clinical judgment. When faced with a difficult analytic dilemma, particularly one involving the treatment of a candidate, I would consult with Brian. He had a way of being at once both direct and tactful, and his discretion was never in doubt.
Above all, he was a man of principle, of rocklike integrity. He could be stubborn in maintaining what he thought was right, unable to bring himself to compromise on certain issues about which we weaker beings might be inclined to waver. He was moral without being moralistic, a noble soul indeed. We who knew him have lost a dear friend and colleague, while psychoanalysis has lost a major figure.