!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
My repeated inquiries at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute finally bore fruit. I met first with Dr. Jacobson, the executive director of the Institute, soon after my return from San Antonio.
“The Board has come around to your view of our field, Dr. Stein,” Dr. Jacobson announced. His stark Nordic features contrasted with his warm mid-south accent. “We’ve been looking for the right candidates to ‘break the barrier’, so to speak, and expand our analytic training programs outside of the stranglehold my medical colleagues have enforced since, well, since the time of Freud. Someone with your background, Harvard, your work in their psychiatric training programs, as well as your background in research…well, let’s just say both you and we can’t afford to have you fail, and what I hear from all your references is, that’s never an option for you.”
I smiled. Even though this is what I’d heard all my life, it had never reassured me. At least he was frank about telling me what the stakes were. “I honestly don’t know if I’m completely ready for total immersion, for being the guinea pig.”
“Glad to hear you say that. I was thinking, after talking it over with Dr. Rosenthal, our Dean of admissions, that you could start out as a fellow. Spend a year in our Thursday evening seminars, keep on with your own therapist – is he an analyst? – and if things go well, if both you and we feel the case has been made, then you could transfer in to the the second year, hopefully finishing by – let’s see, if you start in September, then it would be June of 1985 you’d graduate. How does that sound?”
Relieved, I answered, “Yes…no, my therapist calls himself an analyst, he’s very Freudian, but I don’t believe he’s had a formal certification.” I leaned forward, and went on, “I’m ready, this is what I want. Truthfully, I can’t wait to start.”
That September, I quickly got into the Thursday night rhythm at the Institute. 5:30- 7, Basic Concepts, then dinner in the atrium, followed by Introduction to Analytic Technique from 8-9:30. As I arranged my purse and notes just before the start of the first seminar, I was startled by a tap on my shoulder.
“I thought that was you, sitting here in the corner, trying to hide!” Jeanne Heldman stood, one hand on a hip, neck cocked to the side, a full grin creasing her face. “Janie Stein – what are you doing here?”
During her fours years at med school, followed by a psychiatric residency, we’d drifted apart. I’d last seen her in St. Louis sometime in the mid-‘70s, the last time I’d written her a few years after. I leapt up, gave her a quick embrace, and said, “I haven’t seen you in…what…five years now? How was Philadelphia?”
She stood back, shook her head, and, as if in disbelief, said, “I got married!”
“Really? That’s …good, I hope?”
“Couldn’t be better. Found someone I actually want to have children with. He’s English, we’er going to London next year. I’ve already got a transfer arranged into the London school, they agreed to let me take the first two trimesters here, then…but wait, you’re not an MD, how…why did they…?
“Persistence. I guess. I wouldn’t let them go till they said, ‘Yes’.”
“That’s the Sarah Jane Stein I remember oh, so well,” she said with a bemused shake of her head. She went on, “After this, dinner break, we’ll catch up, I’ll tell you all about Roger…”
We spent the next eight Thursday evenings together, once again a little enclave of two, sharing doubts and dreams, picking up the hidden competition we’d used to encourage each other in college.
The second trimester featured Ethics, followed by Infant and Early Childhood Development. I’d raced through the syllabi the night before, and saw Petyr Cohen, MD, listed as the Ethics instructor. I called up Marcia, and asked, “What was the name of that guy you told me about, the one who had to hide during the war, ‘Peter-something’?”
“Petyr,” she said, with a light emphasis on the second syllable, “Petyr Cohen.”
“Right. I think he’s one of the instructors at the Institute.”
“Well, make sure you tell him I said, ‘Hello’.”
Dr. Cohen wore a rumpled dark brown herringbone sport coat with a blue tie, filled with small indecipherable red letters in groups of three or four. While he explained how confidentiality served as the basis of the therapeutic contract, I studied his face, his voice, his mannerisms. Exceedingly self-assured, he alternated between sitting at the head of the table, and walking around behind us as he spoke, sometimes pausing to lay a hand on one of us to emphasize a point, or ask a leading questions, making sure to address each of us formally, as ‘Dr. —.” Proud as I was of the work that had led to my title, I still felt uncomfortable with it, as if I were wearing a coat several sizes too large. When it came my turn to be anointed, I noticed an unfamiliar tightening deep in my chest up through the back of my neck. Thinking he’d touched me there, I turned quickly, and found him standing several feet away.
“Dr. Stein, you are a psychologist. Unusual to see one of your profession here. I assume you follow the same standards of professional ethics and confidentiality as those of the Hippocratic persuasion?”
At a loss, all I could manage was a brief, formal smile and quick nod of my head. He smiled, said, “Right,” and moved on.
By the time we broke for dinner, with Jeanne in tow, I’d regained my composure, and found the courage to approach him. “Dr. Cohen, may we sit with you?”
He stood up, napkin in one hand, and, with the slightest of bows tempered by an equally slight impish smile, swept his hand broadly across the table. “Certainly, ladies. I’d be honored.”
I explained how we knew Marcia, gave him her regards, and asked, “You grew up in Switzerland?”
He ran his hand across the top of his head, softly ruffling his short-cropped hair, the slightest hint of grey at the temples. After an almost soundless chuckle, he said, “Not really, Dr. Stein. You may have heard I was deposited in Switzerland by my parents when I was only 16 months old, in 1940, before my country – Hungary – sealed its fate by declaring war against the Soviet Union, July of 1941. My parents were prescient, I suppose, they knew what was coming, that Hitler would never let the Carpathian Mountains stand between him and an opportunity to expand his wretched Reich. And, of course, being Jewish, we never did find out what happened to them. Some camp in Poland perhaps? Who knows.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry…” I started.’
He brushed my concern away. “I was too young to even know them. I do have a picture or two, but to me, they have always been unfamiliar members of our star-crossed tribe. I mourn for them collectively, of course, but not as individuals. But thank you.” He quickly collected himself. “As I was saying, my real parents were an American doctor and his wife, a minor diplomat, both on the staff of the American embassy in Geneva, whom my birth parents knew from their previous assignment in Pest. By the time I was eight, I arrived with them in Philadelphia, a full-fledged citizen, with little memory of that tragic time.”
As he stopped to take a breath, and stab a morsel of lasagna on his plate, I asked, “But your name…?”
“Yes, that was from my birth parents. I asked my mother if she had a birth certificate. On it, the spelling is difficult to equate in English, of course, but she said the most common rendering would be with the ‘y’ instead of ‘e’. I am proud of it, every time I see or write my name, I can remember them, and how they sacrificed themselves for me.”
He folded his napkin neatly after patting his mouth three times, then arranged his plate and utensils together in the middle of his tray. Looking deeply at me, he pronounced, “Well, Dr. Stein,” then, with a curt nod to Jeanne, “Dr, Heldman,” then back to me, “it’s been a pleasure talking with you. I hope we will share diner again next Thursday?”
“Please, call me Sarah,” I said, “I’d enjoy that very much.” As I rose, the jangle of keys falling from my purse startled us. He reached down, picked them up to hand to me, then halted as he noticed the small red toy jeep I’d attached to the crowded ring, nearly a decade ago, and forgotten as it faded into the background of my life.
Bemused, he asked with raised eyebrows, “Your car, Sarah?”
Frowning slightly, I tried to blink away the memories floating back. “My boyfriend gave that to me, when I was in college,” I found myself explaining.
“Oh?”
“He was a boy. Just a boy.”
********