On Paul Lippmann

Abstract

I first met Paul when I was twenty, after recently graduating college and beginning my first real job at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where Paul had trained. He supervised and treated postdoctoral fellows, something he did throughout his entire career. Slender and handsome in a rock star way—he seemed larger than life, protean, moving seamlessly amongst local hippies, artists, literati, and the most senior analysts at Riggs. Yet, Paul somehow always managed to remain his inimitable self—how did he ever pull that off? I soon learned that Paul was not only passionate about psychoanalysis but about all emanations of the unconscious mind. Even back in the 70’s, he was involved in an exchange program with Native American healers who visited Riggs and subsequently hosted Paul and his colleagues for “sweat lodge” healing practices at the tribe’s home in South Dakota. His interest in shamanism continued throughout his lifetime. Ultimately, Paul steered me toward graduate school where I followed in his and Fran’s footsteps in the clinical psychology program at NYU. There, finally admitting that I needed treatment and after rejecting therapist after therapist, I turned to Paul, who after giving it some thought exclaimed, “I think I know the right guy for you.” And he was so right. I had a fruitful experience with Leonard Simon whom I saw until I entered the William Alanson White Institute (WAWI) having been beguiled by Paul’s tales of summer sojourns in Provincetown with Clara Thompson and Hassidic dancing with Erich Fromm. I came to deeply respect Paul as the embodiment of the two principles that drew me to psychoanalysis in the first place. First, that we all have darkness in our minds, bodies, and souls. Second, that complexity, ambiguity, and contradiction is the rule, not the exception in the human mind. It was thus no surprise that Paul’s approach to