12 minute read
A Man for All Seasons
Andrew B. DRUCK
Dr. Richard Lasky died on April 10, 2023, a short time after his 80th birthday, following a long illness. He was a charismatic, brilliant psychologist and psychoanalyst who made major contributions to psychoanalytic institutes and to psychoanalytic thinking. Richie, as everyone called him, was a big man, a natty dresser, a force of nature. He was easy to talk to, knew much about many subjects, and spoke about them all with insight, clarity, well-earned authority, and respect for his listeners. A close friend recalls that, “I always enjoyed and was inspired by Richie’s way of listening, his wisdom, his humor. Our discussions would go from clinical matters to politics, and then to travel destinations”. Richie was a dominant intellectual presence in any group. He was a generous, loving mensch, a wonderful and loyal friend, a wise colleague and a beloved husband, brother, and uncle.
Richie often told the story of how, when he was in the army, if you weren’t busy, they would find something for you to do. To avoid that, he spent his time in the library, which was not the hub of military life. He read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, and became hooked on psychoanalysis. Richie went to college at LIU after completing his military service. He was hungry to learn as much as he could, so he kept asking his instructors for a chance to do research. They put him touch with Dr. Frederick Baekland, a leading sleep and dream 2 researcher, with whom he worked for several years. This resulted in four joint research publications, and he began graduate school as a published author, (Richie published thirty papers, reviews, and presentations along with two books and one edited book, over his long career).
Richie married Judy, his life-long partner, a week before both started graduate school in 1968. They celebrated with a brief city honeymoon, then took two and a half months after their first year of school to tour Europe. Judy recalls that, when they were in Spain, Richie was uneasy. When she asked why, he told her that, while in the army and on leave, he’d been traveling through Spain and seen crowds gathered in public spaces. He’d thought it was a festival and gone out to join. It turned out to be a political demonstration and he, along with many others, was arrested. The army got him released, but he was put on a “do not allow to enter” list by both Spain and Portugal. During this vacation, he entered but was very careful about obeying all of the rules, including not parking illegally when he was in Spain.
Richie received his Ph.D. at NYU in 1971 in the community psychology program, where he also took clinical courses. He wrote his doctoral thesis on New York City policemen, going on patrol with several of them for six months to gather data. He interned at Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, where he learned group therapy, a subject he taught for several years. While in graduate school, he worked at the Village Project, a drop-in center for homeless and drug addicted adolescents. He received his analytic training at 3 NYU Postdoc, graduating in 1974, and obtained a certificate in analytic group therapy from Postgraduate Center in 1975.
Richie then moved to C.W. Post, where he taught courses on Freud, in what was a behaviorally-oriented program. The courses were extremely popular, to the consternation of the behaviorist powers-that-be in the program. They didn’t renew his contract, but waited to take this action until the summer months, when students were not there to protest. From that point on, he went into private practice. He taught and supervised for many years at NYU Postdoctoral Program, IPTAR, and seven or eight other training programs.
In his practice, he saw a patient with multiple personality, and published a paper on the topic. A publisher, who had read the paper, approached him and invited him to write a book. In 1982, at the age of 40, Richie brought together his psychoanalytic interests and his studies of police to write “Evaluating Criminal Responsibility in Multiple Personality and Related Dissociative Disorders: A Psychoanalytic Perspective” (Charles C. Thomas, 1982). I remember vividly the celebration for the publication: about forty guests in the Lasky living room drinking champagne and listening to a string quartet play music that Richie and Judy loved.
Richie had become a sought-after supervisor and analyst at NYU Postdoc and IPTAR. In 1986, he suffered a sudden major heart attack and had to take time off from his practice. Being Richie, he used this experience to become one of the first analysts to write about the impact of an analyst’s illness on his patients. This resulted in three papers, including “Catastrophic illness in 4 the analyst and the analyst’s emotional reactions to it” (IJP, 1990) and “Superego conflicts in the analyst who has suffered a catastrophic illness” (IJP, 1992). These were pioneering efforts and Richie was soon in demand for supervision by analysts who were ill.
Truly a Renaissance man, Richie was an avid reader with a wide range of creative interests. He never dabbled; when he was interested in something, he became expert at it. At some point in the 1980’s, Judy wrote a chapter on midlife change for an edited book. Richie read it and thought: if not now, when? He had always been interested in music and was able to enroll in Julliard to study composition for several years. He was talented at it and his knowledge of composition only enriched his appreciation of music. The couple made regular trips to Tanglewood, the Glimmerglass festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Santa Fe opera. Among his favorite composers were Samuel Barber, George Crumb, and Olivier Messiaen. When Richie was in his fifties, he began to study photography at the International Center for Photography. Here, too, he was gifted. He spent years both taking pictures and editing them. His photos inaugurated IPTAR’s “Arts and Society” series with a show in 2015 entitled “Richard Lasky: Fine Art Photography.” When Richie learned something, he was extremely generous about sharing his knowledge. Friends have spoken of his spending afternoons with them, patiently helping them learn how to use a camera and edit photos. He was also generous with his photos. One photo, I think of a cow giving birth, graces homes in New York, New Jersey, and Westchester.
Richie was interested in tribal art: African art, oceanic art, and, later on, Southwest Indian pottery. When he and Judy were on the first of their many trips to New Mexico, Richie saw a piece of pottery that he liked. He asked its price and, when he was told how expensive it was, he asked why. This was his introduction to Southwest Indian pottery. He returned home and started reading…and then reading more. Richie became an expert on this genre, amassing a large collection of books and, as the years went by, an extensive collection of art. The Lasky living room, and Richie’s office, were filled with it.
Richie loved animals. He had two large dogs, Attila (a giant schnauzer) and Samson (a doberman), several finches, and many beloved cats. What was most visible (and audible), however, was his large parrot, Paco, and the two Rosellas, who dominated the home office waiting room of this very classical Freudian analyst. Paco was big, loud, and beautiful. He was a fixture in the suite until the Laskys got Attila, their first dog. Attila would bark from the back room and Paco would imitate his bark. Soon the waiting room sounded like a jungle, and Richie and Judy, reluctantly, parted with the birds.
The couple bought a country home in Sheffield during this period, a beautiful, cozy house, painted white with black trim, on a quiet road adjacent to a large field punctuated by rows of haystacks in the summer. They went there virtually every weekend for 26 years and were generous in lending it to their friends. Owning a country house means owning a car, and I was privileged to spend time on the phone with Richie several times a week as he waited in his car for 6 the alternate side of the street no-parking time to expire. After they sold the house, Richie and Judy were able to satisfy their love of travel, going to Alaska, Hawaii, and Morocco; eventually, Richie was able to fulfill his dream and visit Israel.
Richie was active at both NYU Postdoc and IPTAR. He was President of the Psychoanalytic Society of the NYU Postdoctoral Program from 1982-1984. For approximately two decades, he was an important member of sever- al IPTAR governing boards where his brilliant, wise, creative, and forceful opinions were highly valued. He was able to grasp the essence of an issue quickly. In addition, however, he was not one to suffer fools gladly. He argued eloquently and passionately for high standards and for a classical point of view.
Richie was father of the IPTAR clinic. At a time when candidates were looking for training cases, Richie worked on founding a clinic that would provide high quality, longterm, treatment to the community while also furnishing candidates with training cases. To everyone’s surprise, he was able to get grants that financed the clinic for a number of years. Others participated in the clinic and directed it, but his initial contribution got it off the ground and was indispensable.
After 9/11, looking for a way to contribute to society, Richie and Judy became involved with Doctors of the World (now Healthright), an organization that provided services to people seeking asylum. They interviewed applicants to provide them with documentation of the trauma and mental abuse they had suffered, which would support their applications. This work was pro bono.
Unsurprisingly, some of these people needed psychotherapy. They were referred to a city agency but, when funding to this agency was cut, Richie came to Brett Gorkin, who was then Director of the IPTAR Clinic, with a proposal: could the IPTAR clinic act as a referral source? At that time, there were no resources geared towards psychotherapy with asylum seekers. The clinic board was receptive, and researched it for several months. One of their concerns was that the therapists treating traumatized patients would themselves become vicariously traumatized. In collaboration with the clinic, Richie, addressed this problem by running process groups and also supervising the therapists. He conducted these groups for several years. Brett Gorkin directed the asylum program and Richie worked with the therapists. As Brett told me, “Richie quietly did many things that were progressive and caring. He was always there if you looked closely”.
Richie conducted psychotherapy research with Bert Freedman and Marvin Hurvich. They had obtained permission to analyze tapes of psychoanalytic sessions which were judged by outside raters, in terms of the session arc and movement towards organization and disorganization. After Bert died, Richie continued this research with Anthony Mazella and Jonathan Eger for many years.
Richie was an extremely popular teacher and supervisor at both IPTAR and NYU Postdoc, and a Fellow (training and supervising analyst) at IPTAR, (Postdoc does not have the position of training analyst). He never “phoned it in” when he taught; he prepared his syllabus with thought and re-read all the material (and there was always much of it) every time he taught the class. He was a 8 master teacher, a classical Freudian analyst who taught and supervised from this point of view with depth, clarity, and analytic wisdom, laced with his sense of humor. He influenced and mentored several generations of analytic candidates. In 1993 he published a brilliant and influential book, Dynamics of Development and the Therapeutic Process (Aronson) that provided a clear outline of classical theory and technique. He also edited a festschrift “Symbolization and Desymbolization: Essays in Honor of Norbert Freedman (Other Press) in 2003.
Richie was loved and respected by his students, supervisees, patients, and colleagues. He was thoughtful, funny, and knowledgeable. You could (and I did!) ask him about anything, including obscure psychoanalytic concepts, and receive an informed and insightful opinion. When someone asked me a question I couldn’t answer in a class I was teaching, I would call Richie, leave a message, and get an erudite reply within the hour. Richie, Marvin Hurvich, and I met monthly for several years reading each others’ draft papers. The papers were always improved after Richie’ s comments were applied. Richie was like a sabra plant; seemingly tough on the outside but soft, empathic and loving, with a fount of wisdom on the inside, a twinkle in his eye, and a dry sense of humor. He was generous with his time and his thinking.
One of his extraordinary traits was a notable lack of envy; he was genuinely happy when his friends had successes and he always had your back when you were in difficulty. He was a loyal and great friend.
I cannot end this profile without saying something about Judy. Richie and Judy were married for a little less than fifty-five years. They shared everything— love of art and music, generous hosting in New York and Sheffield, contributions to psychoanalytic organizations. They balanced and complemented each other. Judy was the love of Richie’s life. In his last months of life, he would spontaneously exclaim that Judy was an angel who was keeping him alive. As always, he was right: Judy cared for him and was with him until the very end. Richie died as he lived: with courage, grace, perspective, and love. May his memory serve as a blessing.
I want to thank Judy for spending a good deal of time during this difficult period sharing with me details about Richie and their life together.
Contributor
Andrew B. Druck, PhD., ABPP, is a Fellow (Training and Supervising Analyst), past President, former Dean of Training, and Faculty member at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR). He is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology, Faculty member and Supervising Analyst at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is the author of Four Therapeutic Approaches to the Borderline Patient.
Ben Stephens, photographer, https://www.benstephensphotography.com
