Our Association lost a giant when Leo Rangell passed away on May 28 after sharing 97 years with us. It had been my pleasure to count him as a friend.
Let me begin by reciting some of the facts of this remarkable man's life and career, and then I'll share some personal recollections about Leo. His origins were modest. He was born in Brooklyn in 1913 to immigrant parents from Russia and Poland. Yiddish was spoken in the home, not English. His childhood was characterized by very little in the way of intellectual stimulation, which belies his major contributions to our field. Leo was a product of the New York City public school system. He made a major jump into the Ivy League earning a scholarship to Columbia University. This was followed by medical school at the University of Chicago.
Leo initially trained in neurology at Maimonides Hospital in New York City, but, fortunately for us, he was quickly derailed from this effort by the considerable stimulation going on in New York at that time in the field of psychoanalysis. Leo served in the Armed Forces during World War II, and once he returned, he settled in Los Angeles where he devoted the full force of his prodigious attention to psychoanalysis.
His first scientific publications appeared in the '40s, the start of an eight-decade contribution to our field. Leo steadily rose in both the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytical Association, and he was president of both organizations, not once, but twice. He was a founding member of the Center for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies (CAPS) and won many major accolades including the Heinz Hartman Award from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. He was a very early winner of the Sigourney Award, the so-called Nobel Prize of psychoanalysis. When he finally laid his keyboard to rest, Leo had produced over 400 publications, including a final book when well into his nineties.
My first exposure to Leo's thinking was breathtaking. It was his book, The Mind of Watergate. When it was published in 1980, I was a relatively young man quite upset by the events of Watergate. While not a book about politics or even a book about Nixon, it was vintage Leo. It was about the functioning of the human mind, explaining compromise of integrity and why and how the American population was able to elect as president a man whom they had known historically to be someone many had never trusted.
Leo became honorary president of the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1997, a title previously held by only three luminaries: Anna Freud, Heinz Hartman, and Ernest Jones. Leo stood, deservedly, in very elite company.
My recollections of Leo come from a friendship that evolved during my 30 years in L.A. and which accelerated over the last 10 to 15 years as I became much more actively involved in our national organization. Leo, of course, would be an invited speaker to psychoanalytic venues throughout the vast L.A. basin, and I was oftentimes asked to drive him, always a decided pleasure. I took him to the Newport Psychoanalytic Institute, to the New Center, and to Harbor UCLA Medical Center where I'm a clinical professor. In addition, Leo was a frequent dinner guest in my home, in recent years in the company of our member, Beth Kalish, his partner. Leo and I had many, many long conversations. While he was quite capable of engaging in casual chat, and indeed he could always spark lively conversations, we inevitably found our way to psychoanalytic theory and its contribution to understanding the human mind. Leo was most excited when he was able to discuss how psychoanalytic theory contributed to a unique understanding not only of our patients but also of the entire world around us. It was a natural that he would be a contributor to the Huffington Post up until the end of his life.
Leo once shared with me that he doubted the significance of his work. It was then that I made the decision that if I became president of APsaA I would find some special way to honor him. As fate would have it, I did become APsaA president. I thought he should be given the same title within the American Psychoanalytic Association, honorary president, which he had been awarded by the International Psychoanalytical Association. This would be a particularly fitting honorific and special since no one had ever been given this title before. In late April, I was able to call Leo and let him know that we had just awarded him the title, Honorary President of APsaA. Unfortunately, Leo did not live to come to the June meeting to be honored in person, but he knew about the title and was very thrilled by it.
Leo accomplished many, many things in psychoanalysis. I consider his interest in the concept of unified theory as his major, and arguably most enduring, accomplishment. Leo thought of psychoanalytic theory as a strong and powerful tree with a thick trunk holding up many branches. Leo himself was just such a thick trunk holding many branches. I will miss Leo Rangell, Honorary President of APsaA.