The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 39, Number 2 Summer 2001

In Memory
Robert Chalfin, M.D.

Dr. Chalfin gave this eulogy for Vera Krassin at the March faculty meeting of the NYU Psychoanalytic Institute.

Vera Krassin (Veruschka, as Frank Berchenko affectionately called her) died on January 20th from metastatic breast cancer. She was an integral part, some would say the soul, of our Institute for more than 30 years, starting in 1962 when she was recruited by Mark Kanzer and Sam Lanes.

As Len Shengold put it at her retirement party:

"The nurturing glue
That holds together the Institute at NYU"

Although, in the minds of many our Institute seems not to have had a past prior to the arrival of Vera, Vera did have a very impressive history before she came to us. She was born in Brooklyn in 1928 to Russian immigrant parents. She went to Midwood High School and then to Brooklyn College where she majored in economics and psychology and graduated cum laude in 1949. She attended NYU law school for one year from 1956 to 57. In the years before she came to us, she worked at the Department of Psychology at Yale and at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. In 1955 to 1956 she was Secretary to the Executive Director of the American Psychological Association. From 1958 to 1961 she was Administrative Assistant to the Vice President in charge of financial aid and in 1961-62 she was administrative assistant to the director of the division of social and community psychiatry at Albert Einstein Medical College. She joined us as she was ending a problematic marriage.

Vera was intelligent, lively, funny and friendly. Vera's pleasures were travel and chamber music. Politically liberal, she supported the ACLU and devoured the New York Times. I believe that above all was her devotion to the Institute. When Sam Lanes and Mark Kanzer hired her, they just asked, "Can you keep your mouth shut?" Of course she could, but with Vera this was not simply a matter of following instructions but reflected her character and her traits of loyalty, common sense, good judgment and devotion to the welfare of the Institute. Her idealism and the high standard she set for herself were manifest. I remember that once when I thanked her for her helping me, her response was, "I did what I thought was best for the Institute." A friend from the New York Institute once told me that the word was that if Vera judged that an applicant to the Institute was a "Mensch," no admissions committee meeting was really necessary. As Mike Singer put it, Vera seemed to have a special understanding about what it meant to be a psychoanalyst and a psychoanalyst-in-training. Alan Eisnitz observed that she knew all our peculiarities, particularly those of the directors she worked with. "She was very smart about this and I think developed her own private system of checks and balances. She had a great diplomatic ability set in a very hamish style."

Vera was the embodiment of the continuity of our Institute during its years of growth and change. She joined us at the moment when our own graduates were becoming the important teachers and were assuming the leadership. She was integral to that growth.

She followed us on our trek from Kings County to NYU and the dedication and her steadiness surely helped us achieve that transition. For her it was a move that created times of real unhappiness. She started with us in the comfort of her office in G building at Kings County, where I think she had shared an office with Bill Console. She traveled with us to our frightening and frightful setting in the old Bellevue psychiatric hospital, and then to the isolation of the 10th floor in new Bellevue, then briefly to our private apartment office on 34th Street and lastly to our current quarters. After having the company of our many full-time on site colleagues at Kings County, she felt very isolated at Bellevue during the week. Often she was quite unhappy about that loneliness but always did her dedicated and highly competent work as administrative assistant to the director and as a continuing vital central presence in our Institute.

Again, quoting Len Shengold, referring to that vital continuity:

"Directors, Chairman, come and go
Go find from yesteryear the snow,
Today's top banana, today's big deal
Is tomorrow's thrown out banana peel
Without your loving care we can't survive.
What else can neutralize our aggressive drive?"

For a director, her knowledge and her readiness to alert you to and to take care herself of jobs that needed to be done was more than invaluable. She worked very hard to implement a smooth relationship to the Department and with Bob Cancro's office. I recall her walking our institute insurance through the beaurocratic shoals of NYU to make sure it was paid for on time. It made the job of director immeasurably easier as did the sense of a caring and knowledgeable partner. To quote again:

"Who else will yell at us, "Do it now!"
Who else is there to show us how?
Who else will tell us what we have to do?
Who else can help us keep straight who is who?"

Vera was central and integral to us during the important years of our development into a major Institute. We were more than blessed to have her steady, caring presence during that time. When Vera retired in 1993, Len Shengold expressed all our feelings in this couplet:

"For Vera Krassin to retire Is like combining the San Francisco earthquake with the Chicago fire"

Many of us still here and many who are gone regarded her with great affection. For us she represents the span of our professional development as psychoanalysts. She is synonymous with the time of both our youth and maturity and our Institute's. She embodied the best of our Institute and of ourselves. We miss her and we all remember her with affection, admiration and gratitude.