I first met Hans Loewald in the Fall of 1958, shortly after he arrived in New Haven. As a future analysand of his, I sat talking with him in our preliminary interview when I spotted a hole the size of a quarter in the sole of one of his shoes. It held my attention. A bond began to form, partly because his shoe reminded me of the frequent condition of my own shoes when I was in high school during the Great Depression, but mainly because of the inner-directedness and utter lack of pretense that enabled him to wear those shoes so casually. It seemed to me he did so because they were comfortable, like old house slippers worn thin and thoroughly broken in.
A vivid memory of that episode has stayed with me for nearly forty years. When I mentioned it to Hans recently, he said, with a chuckle, “Like Adlai Stevenson.” During one of the Illinois governor's presidential campaigns, Time magazine published a famous photograph of Stevenson sporting a similar hole in one of his shoes. Hans greatly admired Stevenson. As we reminisced fondly about him, and about Harry Truman, Hans told me that he had gone to the New Haven Green to hear Stevenson when he made a whistle-stop here during his second campaign. Stevenson made a self-deprecating, jocular remark. As I recall, Hans said Stevenson had compared himself unfavorably to Truman, who had stopped at New Haven in the '48 campaign. Hans disapproved, and wrote to Stevenson. He told him he shouldn't make such self-disparaging comments, even in jest; he must manifest self-respect if he wanted the people to respect him.
Hans left Germany right after he completed medical school—within two or three days, as I recall. One of the reasons he left, he said, was because he knew that if he stayed he would become a second-class citizen. “I could never be second-class,” he added, calmly and firmly.
Once I mentioned to Hans a statement Freud had written to Martha early in their courtship. He wrote that his friendships with Fleischl and Breuer had saved him from “the worst fate, that of loneliness.” I told Hans that I never would have said that about loneliness. He said, “Neither would I.” We frequently discussed loneliness and being alone. Hans was very explicit. He treasured being alone—alone with his thoughts. Once he said that at the Whitney Manor nursing home he often awoke in the middle of the night and had the clearest thoughts. He was completely alone.
Yet he was not a loner. He cherished his friendships. And he was not afraid to express directly his feelings for his friends.
His gentle wit could be very thought-provoking. This past June I spoke about a trip I was to make soon to my cabin in Maine. I told him I looked forward to the spring fishing for small-mouth bass and salmon, because they were then at the top of the water. I described how fishing then was “really fun.” You cast your fly on the surface, or trolled a lure just beneath the surface. You could see the fish strike. Then the fish would jump from the water one, two, three, maybe four times, and maybe tail-walk on the surface, trying to shake its head free of the hook. Hans quietly said, “Fun for you.”
At his memorial, people referred to Hans as a poet. He really was a poet. He told me that in going through some of his notes and personal papers he found a sizable packet of poems he had written as a young man in Germany. He hadn't read them in years. When he did so now, he liked them. He spoke of exploring the possibility of having them published. I said such a volume would arouse interest and curiosity; it could be titled Poems of a Psychoanalyst. “No,” he said, “I would want them to be taken as the poems of a poet.”
Once when I said good-bye to Hans and we clasped hands, I found myself blurting out, “Hans, you're a great guy.” Drink a toast to that sometime. And when you do, consider joining Hans with a very dry martini, or a Johnny Walker Red. But not both!