Remembering Ernest S. Lawrence, PhD, FIPA 

"Talent is nurtured in solitude. Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world."  - Goethe

I was stunned and shaken when I first learned of Ernie's death, far too upset to have written anything at the time. I am grateful for the opportunity to say something now, now that some time has passed and I can once again feel Ernie's presence in my mind without the acute grief that surrounded my inner picture of him during the months after his death.  

I will not recount Ernie's great accomplishments, his leadership in the fateful lawsuit that brought such changes to psychoanalysis, the visionary role he played at CIPS, or the honor bestowed upon him several years ago when the CIPS board honored him by naming Ernie a "Distinguished Life Member of CIPS." Everyone here knows about Ernie's accomplishments. I wish to speak about Ernie in a more personal way.

I enjoyed a very special relationship with Ernie, a relationship with a deep personal content but also with a concentrated focus on CIPS and on our visions for CIPS. My Ernie may be a bit different from the Ernie that each of you holds in your heart. Perhaps each of us has a somewhat unique Ernie, though I am sure that the core truths about Ernie are evident to all of us - Ernie the visionary, Ernie the bold, Ernie the pragmatic, above all, perhaps, at least for me, Ernie the strong.

I first met Ernie in the summer of 2003 at a face-to-face meeting of the CIPS Board. It was the last meeting of Steve Ellman's presidency and the first of Ernie's presidency. It was a particularly important meeting for me because we were scheduled to meet with the president of NAAP (the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis), a group that was lobbying for the licensing of psychoanalysts - a good idea - but on the basis of very minimal standards - a very bad idea. I had been leading an effort to rally CIPS to oppose NAAP's efforts and now - on this day - we were to meet with the NAAP president and formulate a policy about NAAP. I was keenly focused on NAAP, and hoped others would feel as I did about this challenge. I wasn't sure what would happen.

We were all together at Steve's apartment-Steve, Jim Gooch (who was CIPS Secretary), Ernie, Anne, Terry, Beth and others. It was my first in-person encounter with the California contingent, all of whom I would come to treasure as friends and colleagues. I had spoken with everyone by phone, of course, at our monthly board meetings and, by chance, had already had a very private talk with Ernie and Anne about some personal matters that had kept me away from an earlier face-to-face meeting in California. And now we were finally together in person.

Ernie was quiet at the start of the meeting, quiet as we met with the president of NAAP, quiet as the discussion of NAAP unfolded. At a certain point, however, Ernie noted we didn't have a CIPS Bulletin, that we didn't have a roster of members, that we had no material in print or on the web to identify us and empower us as a group. A bit later in the meeting, Ernie announced his first formal action as the new CIPS president: the creation of a Public Policy Committee, to be chaired by Beth (on the West Coast) and myself (on the East Coast). I remember the moment, the feeling of excitement, not only about my campaign to mobilize CIPS to address the NAAP challenge, but also about CIPS and about Ernie.

I recognized at once that Ernie as a man who would become important to me, not only as an ally in CIPS, but as a person of vision and of action to whom I could turn for advice, for brainstorming, for comradeship. Over the ensuing years, he was all that to me, and more. Over time Ernie also became a very beloved friend and mentor.  

I savor, in memory, the hours we spent talking late into the night about CIPS, about what needed to be done to make CIPS a robust "force" in psychoanalysis, about the Public Policy Committee and the tasks we needed to accomplish. I remember well his language - a language of force, energy, strength, and action. And, of course, I remember his vision for CIPS. He saw in our fledgling organization a potential for large accomplishments, imagining its potential, its possible futures - much, perhaps, as a good analyst might envision a patient's potential and possible futures. Hour by hour, and late into the night, we would talk about our ideas for CIPS, forge possible strategies, discuss challenges, air our personal frustrations and articulate our hopes. Over time, Ernie communicated to me his confidence, not only in CIPS but also in me, and urged me to take on more leadership and responsibility in the organization. It would be no overstatement to say that, in this way, and in others, Ernie helped shape my adult life even as he helped shape the future of CIPS.

Ernie was a wonderful friend. Even before I met Anne and Ernie, I had occasion to share some very personal experience with them, which I did only reluctantly since I didn't really know either of them personally. I was expected to participate in my first face-to-face CIPS Board meeting in California but, as it turned out, my wife and I were going through a personal crisis at the time, related to infertility and the challenge of adoption. I could have avoided the personal exchange, but Anne and Ernie were so kind and open with me, I felt I wanted to be more fully open with them. I cannot tell you how gentle, hopeful, and supportive they were, encouraging and upbeat, and telling me about their own family, and soon enough, about their much beloved adoptive grandson. Two years later, at the Clinical Conference in Rye, my wife brought our adoptive daughter to meet my new CIPS friends and comrades. On that Saturday night, Ernie came back to my apartment to have dinner with us and to play with our little Ellie. We ordered in Chinese food because I didn't want my wife to miss the chance to sit with Ernie and me, or join us in playing with Ellie. When Alice and Ellie had finally gone to sleep, Ernie and I went out for drinks and shared our delights in the little ones (his and mine).  

I remember Ernie telling me the Hebrew name of his grandson-Eitan-a name, he emphasized on more than one occasion that means "strength." I felt that Ernie was telling me that he saw in Eitan-and, in some way, in my daughter-strength or the potential for strength. It was a message I needed to hear at the time, for I feared for my little daughter, was pained by the trials she had endured before her adoption, and worried about the challenges she would face growing up. I felt in Ernie's message about Eitan, and in so many other ways, that Ernie was also exhorting me, as he exhorted all of us, to summon our strength, to be bold in facing adversity, to nourish our dreams, and to take on challenges despite long odds or obstacles. It is an exhortation I carry with me, that I hear in Ernie's voice and, more and more, in my own.

Rick Perlman, PhD, FIPA, served as the IPTAR representative to the IPTAR board from 1999-2005 and as CIPS President from 2005-2009. Rick is President-elect of IPTAR.

Paula Ellman, PhD, FIPA left the CIPS Board to become President of the District of Columbia branch of the Contemporary Freudian Society (formerly New York Freudian Society). Taking her place on the CIPS Board is David Falk, PhD, FIPA. David is the current President of the Board of Trustees at Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center (APsaA).Anyone interested in learning more about the DMS, open to any candidate or analyst who is a member of an IPA affiliated Society (not already a member of CIPS), is invited to contact David at drdavidfalk@hotmail.com.

Institute for Psychoanalytic Training & Research (IPTAR)

Los Angeles Institute & Society for Psychoanalytic Study (LAISPS)

• Michael J. Diamond, PhD, FIPA is presenting a Master CE Class entitled "A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective on Masculinity" (with Steve Axelrod) at the 32nd Annual Spring Meeting of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) in Santa Fe, NM in mid-April. In addition, Michael and Chris Christian will be discussing their edited CIPS Series book, The Second Century of Psychoanalysis: Evolving Perspectives on Therapeutic Action in a "Meet the Authors" Discussion Hour at the Division 39 Conference.

• Atop Mt Kilimanjaro, training analyst Harriet Wrye, PhD, FIPA felt a millennial call to create a sabbatical, to "pull up stakes" in her life, as she did whenever she and her husband backpacked in the high Sierras with their llamas. Inspired, she slowly closed her Los Angeles psychoanalytic practice of thirty years, leased her home and set out on an odyssey into the "back of beyond." She began in New Guinea, following a dream of studying primitive people after years of analyzing primitive mental states in her practice. Journeying through Indonesia, Africa, South America, the Middle East, Plum Village Monastery and the landscape of a personal bout with breast cancer, creating a sabbatical away from the familiar, her journey became a life-changing spiritual pilgrimage that led to a deep practice of letting go of assumptions, habits and patterns, and stepping into freedom.

Please visit  www.pullingupstakesbook.com to order the book, read a sample chapter and endorsements by colleagues Hedda Bolgar, Michael Diamond, Nancy Choderow and others.  

Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society (NPS)

• Dana Blue, LICSW, FIPA has recently joined the CIPS Board as the second director representing the interests of NPS.

• NPS is also continuing to prepare for its annual international Evolving British Object Relations conference rescheduled to September 7-9, 2012 (Please note that the date has been changed from what we advertised in the last issue of the News Brief). The theme this year is Emotion and Meaning in Object Relationships: Experiences of Oedipal Constellations. How do mother and father's conscious and unconscious emotional union create meaning for the baby? How does unconscious emotion impact the discovery of meaning? Where does meaning originate? Do Oedipal configurations inform us when we are with our patients? This conference will explore these questions of internal relationships in light of our clinical experience. Featured presenters are Richard Rusbridger, FIPA (London), Gisela Klinckwort, FIPA (Munich), and moderator Robert Oelsner, MD, FIPA (Seattle). The call for papers deadline is July 1, 2012. See www.nps.us.com for conference details and submission guidelines or contact conference committee chair, Judy K. Eekhoff at jkeekhoff@comcast.net.

Psychoanalytic Center of California (PCC)