The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 43, #2 Summer 2005

Robert Savitt, M.D.
by Muriel Laskin, M.D.
presented before the PANY Scientific Meeting
on March 21, 2005

Robert Savitt died recently, the oldest member of our society—he was 98 + and died of old age, having survived cancer many years ago—and there is no one of his contemporaries now living who knew him intimately and professionally as a man and a psychoanalyst. I shall share with you a few memories and thoughts from the past two decades.

He was a man who valued his friends and after the death of his wife, Basia, who had been seriously ill, about ten years ago, his friends and colleagues were increasingly important to him. He had no family at all.

He loved to talk of his travels to other lands, where he exchanged clinical and academic experiences with foreign analysts, and to talk of his student years, how he came to be a psychoanalyst. This past December, he told me he believed he was the last surviving member of his medical school class, NYU 1930, coming up to 75 years ago.

After he retired, he continued to read the journals and the PANY Bulletin until this past year when his sight, always poor, failed. He was particularly interested in and wrote about addictions, to substances and “love”. One of his nearest friends was a Ph. D. with whom he studied the treatment of psychosomatic illnesses. He donated money to begin the funding of a lectureship honoring Dr. Philip Wilson last summer. When we were talking about the celebration of the 50th anniversary of PANY on April 16, he said he wanted me to tell you all how very happy it made him to recall his part in establishing PANY and his part on the faculty in the first years of our institute. He was always involved in the workings and progress of PANY, and was President from 1973-'75.

He was generous and thoughtful in many ways. When he and Basia gave up their beautiful home, they gave us some possessions. One, a plant, now overfills our living room. It delighted him that it continued to flourish in our home.

He liked to talk about the time Danny Kaye saw him eating a lox and cream cheese sandwich in a deli and said, “I see you also like a “Brooklyn Meichal”; and, he always appreciated it when my husband brought him the makings of a “Brooklyn Meichal.” He was a good friend and an appreciative friend.

This is the notice we placed in the New York Times:

“We mourn the death of Robert Savitt on March 10 in his ninety-ninth year. Charter member of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York, he was its President from 1973 to 1975. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Training and Supervising Analyst at the NYU Psychoanalytic Institute, he was a gifted teacher, known for his pithiness, precision, and perspicacity. Generous, he endowed scholarships and a lectureship. Sweet-natured, he will be remembered by those whose lives he touched with respect and gratitude.

Charles Goodstein, M.D.
President, Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Samuel Herschkowitz, M.D.
Director, NYU Psychoanalytic Institute”