School Story:
So I went off to college. In my freshman year I took Social Relations 10. I read Freud, Erikson and Sullivan and poof, I knew what I wanted to do in life. One day during freshman reading period, chatting in the dining room with a friend, I said “I just read the most fantastic book, called Childhood and Society, by some guy named Erik Erikson. He said, “Erikson is here!” I rushed to audit Erikson’s course sophomore year, took his junior tutorial, and had him for a thesis advisor senior year (but only for 4 months because he went off to India to research his Ghandi book). One day I asked his advice about a romantic dilemma. He said, “I can’t discuss it with you professionally because I don’t know the girl, but I will talk to you as if you were my son.” Whew! Once I asked his advice about whether to become a psychologist or a psychiatrist. He recommended psychiatry and after some mild denigration of some in the field , he said “but you will be a good one because you have a Harvard education and a personality.” Whew!
I went out for freshman football (thanks to Mr. Totura). I was 190 lbs. I felt small for the first time in my life. I was up against fellow tackles who were 225, 235, and 245 pound, high school All- Americans. They were way bigger than I, and better athletes. They kicked my butt. I was 5th string. (me, a high school football star). I didn’t know any of the guys. The coach was cold and removed. It was every man for himself. College football was no fun. It sucked.
For the next 3 years I played intramural tackle football for Kirkland House. We had coaches and equipment and uniforms, everybody had played in high school, and had dropped off the freshman or JV teams. I loved it. I joined the football band, and went to every varsity game. Imagine my chagrin embracing Joel Feldman on the field after the Harvard-Dartmouth game sophomore year. He in his muddy football uniform, me in my band uniform.
I had a great education. I took intro courses in art history, music, English literature, each with great professors. I took four pre-med courses (which I hated, except for George Wald’s Nat Sci 5, which was great). I loved my Soc Rel courses ( interdisciplinary sociology, anthropology and psychology) (thanks to Mr. Price). I had a group of good friends, though not as super tight as my best guys in high school or in medical school and residency. My romantic life left much to be desired, for the most part.
I was rejected at Harvard Medical School (I had a weak science record). I went to Albert Einstein. My first year was torture. I hated it. Four years of learning to think creatively, and then memorizing bones. I was in the lower half of the class for 2 years. By the third year, in clinical rotations, I began to enjoy it and did better.
I did my internship at French Hospital in San Francisco. Every fourth night and fourth weekend. It was relatively easy and fun. One day, an elderly lady for whom I had ordered an enema the day before, said “Oh doctor, I feel so much better, thank you!!!” To my tremendous surprise, I experienced a deep feeling of pleasure. “What?” I asked myself, “ an academically-oriented, psychoanalyst-to-be, feeling such pleasure from giving an old lady an enema? What gives?” One morning, when I learned that an elderly man I had been taking care of for weeks had died, I cried.
I did two months of obstetrics. Our Chief of Ob had written a book on natural child birth. Many flower children from around SF came to our hospital to deliver their babies. It was joyful. I loved it. I considered deferring my psychiatric residency at Einstein and moving up to Mendocino County and delivering babies at home for a year. But I realized that if and when obstetrical complications arose I’d be in deep trouble, so good sense prevailed, and I stuck to original plans.
I came back to New York and, after a mostly enjoyable year in San Francisco, I was glad to be home. My psychiatric residency was good. Smart and challenging colleagues and mostly good teachers, stimulating readings and seminars, very good friends, interesting patients, good and rewarding work.
The atmosphere was warm and collegial. We played touch football in Central Park on Saturday mornings in the fall throughout residency and for some years beyond, followed by greasy spoon breakfasts. We took several whitewater canoe trips together. One year my friend Dave Moltz and I were in joint supervision with an old lady child analyst. Each week everything I said was shit, and everything Dave said was golden. Finally I complained. She said “THAT’S NOT TRUE! , is it David?” He said “Yes, it is.” Dave Moltz occupies a warm corner of my heart.
After residency I started my own analysis, which went on forever. It was very valuable to me. I took a staff job at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, an Albert Einstein affiliate in the South Bronx, and I started a part-time private practice. I was so anxious during my first session with my first private patient that I didn’t hear a word he said. The next year Bronx-Lebanon started a psychiatric residency training program and I became the director of residency training. For the next three years I was a full-time teacher of medical students and residents. I discovered my love of teaching.
In August, 1976, I met Janie at Asparagus Beach in Amagansett. Who picked up whom is a matter of dispute. In any event, we dated, fell in love and got married in February, 1978. On the first morning of our honeymoon, while eating scrambled eggs and flying fish on the porch of our hotel in Barbados, a woman came up to us and said, “I can see you two are very much in love. May you always stay this way.” This was excellent advice. However life being what it is, not every day is a honeymoon!
Jeffrey was born on March 13, 1981. I had no preference for the sex of our baby. It was only when I called my in-laws and shouted “It’s a boy!!” that I realized how thrilled I was to have a son.
At Janie’s 6 months post-partum check-up, a pelvic tumor was discovered. We endured weeks of agony until Janie’s rare tumor was diagnosed and removed. Because of the possibility of recurrence with a subsequent pregnancy, we couldn’t/wouldn’t risk anymore child-bearing.
Jeffrey is a source of great joy. For five years after graduating from Tufts he worked in PR, found it okay but not really satisfying, wasn’t sure what to do. We encouraged him, gently, to consider some kind – any kind – of graduate school, and assured him we’d have his back. One day he said “maybe I’ll try law school.” We were thrilled. So he started at Cardozo last year and discovered that he is interested in law and enjoys it. In July, Jeff and Lindsay – who is as sweet and lovely a person as we could have hoped for – were married. They live four blocks away and have dinner with us on Sunday nights. We’re lucky.
Meanwhile, back in the Bronx, it wasn’t long before I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to support a wife and family in Manhattan from my sub-basement office in the South Bronx. So in 1978 I got a job at Gracie Square Hospital, a small private psychiatric hospital in Manhattan. The next year the only two, full-time psychiatrists senior to me left Gracie Square, and I became the clinical director of the hospital. I did that for the next 12 years – until the hospital was sold to New York Hospital – and I then became a full-time private practitioner.
Here’s what I do. I ‘m an old-fashioned general psychiatrist. I do all the things that psychiatrists do. I do analytically –oriented psychotherapy. I prescribe psychotropic medications. I treat a small number of hospitalized patients, and I treat outpatients. I teach and supervise medical students and residents. I am an ECT maven.