Waiting for the elevator in Helen Fischer's lobby, I was worried. How would Helen, that exemplar, that paragon of activity and organization, be in the throes of retirement? Then I overheard the people waiting next to me expressing their gratitude that Helen had arrived on the scene in the nick of time, thrown the rascals out, and taken over the management of her co-op building. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Snyder: I thought we'd talk about retirement, but I think we should talk about work. What was your first job?
Fischer: I started to work when I was twelve, as an usher at a movie theater. I was born in Brooklyn and went to Brooklyn College at a time when it was hard to get in and harder still to graduate. I was a math and physics major, and was going to be a physicist. In the whole world there is not one profession that I am less suited for. After graduation, I qualified for an elementary school teachers license.
Snyder: And then?
Fischer: First I worked for Jewish Family Services doing intake. Then I started to teach in South Brooklyn. I taught for three years, and then Bill came back from the Middle East and proposed marriage. I said, “Let's go!”
Snyder: What was Bill doing in the Middle East?
Fischer: He was a contractual employee of the Arabian American Oil Company. While we were in Saudi Arabia, I also taught school. After five years we came back, and I discovered that I had lost my teachers license. All this marvelous, rich experience I had didn't count. They said I had to retake the teaching exam, and I said—well, never mind exactly what I said. I went out to find a job. When I was interviewed for a job with The American by Harry Weinstock—He was the most elegant man; he always wore a white linen coat in the office—he asked me about my qualifications. When I said I was a kindergarten teacher, he said, “Perfect! You've got the job.” I was hired as assistant to John McVeigh, who was then Executive Secretary.
Snyder: When was that?
Fischer: It was ‘57, maybe ‘58—the heyday of psychoanalysis.
Snyder: It was glamorous then.
Fischer: It was glamorous. Just as I was hired, John, who was already ill, died. So this Jewish girl from Brooklyn walked in from Saudi Arabia, did the best she could, earned while she learned, learned while she earned—
Snyder: And started to run The American.
Fischer: Right! After doing my best for a few years, I went to the Executive Committee and finally they gave me the title of Acting Executive Secretary. I was “acting” for three years at the magnificent salary of seventy-five dollars a week.
Snyder: No benefits?
Fischer: No benefits, though eventually I did put in a benefits package for employees of The American. Anyway, after three years, I went back to the Executive Committee and said that my friends had suggested that I join Actors Equity unless they changed my title.
Snyder: How big was your staff then?
Fischer: There was me and there was a bookkeeper. She was always hiding behind the files. As a matter of fact, she was always hiding things in her files. For example, if you sent her ten dollars to do something, she would put the ten-dollar bill in a file identified by the name of the sender.
Snyder: And so there were the two of you, two typewriters, and a telephone.
Fischer: One typewriter. The office was in the old Bar building, on the mezzanine. The offices were about half the size of this room. They were immediately under the plumbing of the men's room. Every time somebody flushed we
could hear it through the exposed pipes, which ran right through our offices. When I interviewed for the job, Mr. McVeigh asked me if I knew anything about analysis. I said, “Enough to know that this isn't the Freudian group,” because I couldn't believe that the Freudian group would have offices like that.
Snyder: How many members were there?
Fischer: About four hundred.
Snyder: You really must have known all of them.
Fischer: I guess I did. The American has grown some since then. It was founded in 1911, and between then and 1957 it didn't grow much. For part of that time, it was under the auspices of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. It was a kind of stepchild.
Snyder: Now there are more than two typewriters.
Fischer: Indeed. We have even been computerized for more than twenty years.
Snyder: What other sorts of changes have occurred?
Fischer: In one way, you could say that The American has emerged from being an elitist club.
Snyder: I remember the dinner dances at every meeting. No one could attend unless they had graduated.
Fischer: The candidates would hang around the door and watch the luminaries walk in. It was like a Hollywood opening without the searchlights. People dressed better in those days. I remember overhearing someone say, “See that woman in the ermine wrap? That's my analyst's wife, and my analysis paid for that coat.”
Snyder: What else has changed?
Fischer: It's not so clubby anymore, except in little enclaves within the organization. There are certain committees that do tend to become clubs after they've been in place for a while.
Snyder: Is that a bad thing?
Fischer: Oh, I don't think so. One of the major effects of joining the national organization is that the member's analytic world expands. He meets colleagues from other places; he makes new friends and the scope of what is a very lonely profession is enlarged. Those who make it part of their professional lives to attend meetings find that their world is bigger and that there are concerns in the field beyond what they experience locally. I think those who don't become members, or who aren't active in The American, are really missing something.
Snyder: Why do you think they don't join?
Fischer: I think some graduates finish their training with a negative feeling; they've been disenchanted during their training and perhaps by local or national politics.
Snyder: Somebody once joked that the reason politics are so cutthroat in organizations like this, is that the stakes are so small.
Fischer: Some graduates worry about certification, though remarkable changes have occurred in the certification process. Actually, The American has become much more democratic. There's been the inclusion of nonmedical people, but what seems even more important is that The American has become less secretive. Much more of what goes on is discussed out in the open, where people can watch. Many more people are participating. Unfortunately, the membership population is on hold.
Snyder: That, of course, mirrors what is happening in psychiatric and psychoanalytic education.
Fischer: Well, the organization has really changed since the days of Hungarians in opera capes.
Snyder: I can guess who you mean. What about the role of women in the organization?
Fischer: That's an interesting question. I think I was dealing with more women in the early days than at present. There were many women then who were in leadership positions: the Boston folks, Sally Bonnett in New York, and Joan Fleming and Grete Bibring. Now we have a
woman president, but not a great many other women in leadership positions. But The American was always in the forefront of organizations in terms of being welcoming to women. I think one of the areas that needs exploration is the representation of other groups. We have an extremely poor representation of African-Americans, who apparently are not going into the field. Other ethnic minorities are also poorly represented. I think The American needs to be proactive in recruiting in these areas.
Snyder: The number of African-Americans going into psychiatry is very small compared to the number going into other fields of medicine. And I would guess that of those who go into psychiatry, very few then become analysts.
Fischen: I think that is partially understandable. I think our recruitment of minority people will probably be helped by our including psychologists, but I'm not sure.
Snyder: You've been with the highest echelons of the organization for a long time. Presidents come and go, but you've been therefor the whole thing.
Fischer: I've been a senior civil servant. A Brit once said to me, 'That's where the knowledge, if not the power, is.“
Snyder: I think that's true. How have you been changed by your experiences with The American?
Fischer: I am older.
Snyder: We didn't notice that. Those of us who might have noticed are also older.
Fischer: I think I am wiser.
Snyder: You were a little kid when you started. How has working for this organization changed you, besides helping you to acquire wisdom?
Fischer: Living with, working with, and reporting to people who had psychoanalytic knowledge helped me to acquire a certain kind of perception and sensitivity that seems to be lacking in some people I know who are not psychoanalysts. In my years at The American, I worked very hard. I wouldn't have stayed if it hadn't been constantly challenging. Margaret Mahler once said that she didn't know how I did this impossible job. Each time I thought I had established order, some other stuff would hit the fan. Margaret thought I was able to do it because I had my priorities right, and I think she was right.
Snyder: What was it like in the fifties and sixties when psychoanalysis was, in a sense, the only game in town?
Fischer: We felt like we were on top of the heap. After World War II, analysis was the right thing at the right time. The individual was important then. Economic times were good. We didn't worry about the cost of hotel rooms, only about the quality of the meeting rooms.
Snyder: It has always seemed to me that you knew every one of our three thousand members.
Fischer: When I retired in June I felt that I had known almost all the people who were deeply involved in the organization. That's going to change. I hope younger people will become active in The American. They will enrich the organization.
Snyder: What would you say was the most difficult time?
Fischer: The lawsuit was absolutely dreadful. As I said earlier, if there wasn't one kind of crisis, there was another. But the lawsuit was pretty horrible. Dick Simons was president. We couldn't have had a better leader. The Association owes him a great debt. He gave of himself unstintingly. The organization had believed that we were doing everything perfectly right. And then—the lawsuit. We didn't know what hit us. We were afraid that we were going to lose everything. Those scenes across the table from the people who were suing us were simply incredible.
Snyder: I think we need a funny story at this point.
Fischer: There is a classic story about Ives Hendrick, who, after his presidency and in his dotage, didn't seem to realize that he was no longer in a leadership position. The Association was marvelously tolerant of this great man, who was obviously falling apart in bits and pieces, and falling asleep at meetings as well. On one occasion he asked for the privilege of the microphone. As he walked up, his trousers fell. Hendrick was a Boston Brahmin and despite that, not only
“… The American has become much more democratic….less secretive. Much more of what goes on is discussed out in the open, where people can watch.”
did his trousers fall completely down, but he was not wearing underwear. He stood up there with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and said in his coolest voice, “Darn! I knew I should have fixed my braces better this morning.”
Snyder: And he just went on?
Fischer: No. He pulled them up and zipped himself while the audience sat there very politely. My assistant said, “Now I understand the whole thing.”
Snyder: What else was part of your difficult job?
Fischer: There have been all kinds of Executive Committees. Usually people managed to put aside their differences and their agendas and work together as a team. But there have been times when the Executive Committee was simply hell.
Snyder: Those must have been the times when your experience as a kindergarten teacher came in handy. Would they literally be yelling at each other?
Fischer: Not exactly yelling, but if you could see some of the correspondence.
Snyder: Yelling in print.
Fischer: Yes. But at other times it wasn't that obvious.
Snyder: You mean they didn't know they'd been stabbed until they'd bled to death?
Fischer: Right.
Snyder: Who was the most fun as president?
Fischer: Oh, there were fun times with every president, more or less.
Snyder: Who was the most difficult?
Fischer: They are all a little difficult. As you know, there was a private party given in my honor in Philadelphia. All the past presidents who were still around came. As I looked around the room, there wasn't one that I hadn't really liked, in one way or another. They said wonderful things about me, so I assume my feelings were reciprocated.
Snyder: Tell me something about your retirement.
Fischer: As you know, I am a consultant, so I really haven't had the chance to stay in bed until noon, which I was worried I might do.
Snyder: That's not your style.
Fischer: I think it could be, but I'm now helping to get the Foundation up and running. That's fun.
Snyder: How is that going?
Fischer: We are doing okay, but it is difficult getting off the mark. None of us have ever done this before.
Snyder: But that's what you've done all along. You've boldly gone where no man has gone before. Or woman. You've taken an organization which was the stepchild of the New York Institute and created a very large body with many, many functions.
Fischer: Maybe too many.
Snyder: Tell me more about the Foundation.
Fischer: We are going to have an American Psychoanalytic Foundation with a clear administrative tie to The American, but set up as a completely separate legal entity. It will raise funds for identified projects. Eventually, we plan to subsume the Research Fund, the Student Loan Fund, and parts of the Fellowship Program under it. We're also talking about a Building Fund. The Foundation will promote the continued growth of psychoanalysis through education, research, and clinical programs.
Snyder: Does the Foundation have a board of directors already?
Fischer: Yes, though it's still in the process of formation. There's Carol Lindemann Abend, Harvey Rich is the chair, Nadine Levinson in San Diego, and Harold Kulish.
Snyder: Has the Foundation started to collect money yet?
Fischer: No. We're still doing all the tedious stuff that creates an organization, like filing for nonprofit status, writing bylaws, getting a letterhead, etc. By the fall I hope that we will have mailed at least one communication to the membership and that we will have produced some kind of explanatory flyer about the Foundation. It would be wonderful if we could have some sort of fundraiser at the December meeting.
Snyder: You're also going to raise money outside The American?
Fischer: If we can. This whole thing was started by Marvin Margolis. There's also a committee within The American to help local groups start their own foundations.
Snyder: Life was easier in the days when organizations had ladies' auxiliaries.
Fischer: Actually, I'm in favor of having an auxiliary. Why shouldn't we have a group called Friends of The American?
Snyder: What do you think is going to happen with The American?
Fischer: Well, I certainly hope it is going to survive and prosper. It's certainly not in an easy place right now. There's the whole health care reform thing, which is making all of us nuts. I don't know if anyone is listening to our small voice crying in the wilderness. I think The American has done a very poor job of promoting analysis—too little public education about analysis as therapy. It's one of our weakest spots, besides the membership issue.
Snyder: You've taken on a huge task. What about this garden you want to tend?
Fischer: I am a very serious gardener. I'm not just a pruner of roses. I really get into the dirt. We have an old English cottage.
Snyder: So you have a cottage garden?
Fischer: Right! Cottage garden. No veggies. Flowers. I have a rose garden, too. But I haven't had much time to think about it yet. I was involved in a revolution in this apartment building. We had a big takeover—
Snyder: And the good guys won.
Fischer: And there may be some other things I want to do.
Snyder: So you retired without a lot of plans in place?
Fischer: Yes. You know, Elise, I've been working since I was twelve years old. This whole thing is like a fantasy to me. Like I can be the consultant to the Foundation in my nightgown at seven in the morning. I don't have to get all gussied up and go into the office. It's gorgeous.
Snyder: I was going to say that we will all miss you dreadfully, but I think we will be seeing a lot of you. I hope you have time for your garden.
Fischer: I hope I do, too.
Snyder: Thank you, not just for this interview, but for all that you have done for all of us.