In Memoriam: Chaim F. Shatan (1924-2001) (memorial)

Chaim Shatan died of heart problems on August 17, 2001. This psychiatrist, teacher, psychohistorian, and advocate for Vietnam veterans, is being mourned by colleagues in the Psychohistory Forum as well as many other people whose lives he touched. He was born on September 1, 1924, in the town of Wolclawek, Poland, and was brought to Toronto, Canada, as a two-year-old, later moving to Montreal. An honor student, he took his undergraduate and medical degrees at McGill University in Montreal, before coming to New York City in 1950 to begin his six-year training program at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. He held academic appointments at Columbia, McGill, New York University, and a variety of other institutions. Despite his numerous health problems forcing a temporary retirement in 1953-1954, Shatan practiced psychotherapy as recently as last April. Though his career was devoted primarily to the private practice of individual therapy, he also did group therapy as well as hypnosis with patients suffering from phobias, obesity, and addiction to cigarettes.

“Hi” Shatan had a great thirst for knowledge which led him into many fields including psychohistory where I met him a quarter of a century ago at an Institute for Psychohistory meeting. He was justifiably proud of his work in helping Vietnam War veterans deal with what he helped to label as “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD). Disillusioned veterans were angry, self-destructive, and aversive to the idea of therapy. Dr. Shatan formed “rap groups” for free and frank discussion involving as many as 40 volunteer New York psychoanalysts including Robert J. Lifton. His July, 1972, New York Times op-ed article, “The Grief of

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Soldiers,” helped spark a nationwide Vietnam veterans self-help movement with over 1,000 rap groups established in Operation Outreach. Norma Shatan, his wife of 46 years, reports a moving incident in Utah. There was such affection for Chaim at a session mostly comprised of veterans he was training to run self-help groups in storefront meeting centers, that a huge ex-marine picked him up on his broad shoulders and carried him around the room triumphantly, while the trainees applauded.

His efforts on veterans’ behalf included working to include PTSD in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III, 1980), testifying before a congressional committee on PTSD, and speaking at the Pentagon, law schools, courts-martial, and international congresses. He saw himself as a multidisciplinary student of combat and war neuroses, giving worldwide presentations on bogus manhood and honor, combat neurotics, PTSD, grief in soldiers, the sexualization of combat, addiction to war, and genocide. As a founding member in 1985 of the Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (now the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies) Professor Shatan worked with a large variety of groups suffering from stress disorders. As recently as July of last year in Madrid, he gave the keynote address at the founding of the Spanish Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, whose primary focus is on the psychic trauma flowing from Basque separatist terrorism.

A central thread of his clinical work since 1970 had been to heal those suffering from the massive man-made catastrophes of his lifetime. It was his contention that Vietnam veterans, Holocaust survivors, and other victims of PTSD could be treated within the same groups. In 1999-2000, at Mt. Sinai Medical School, he lectured on how to help the children of Holocaust survivors deal with intergenerationally transmitted trauma. In recent years he turned increasingly to the psychology of the need for enemies, which we often focus on at the Forum.

Chaim Shatan lectured far more than he wrote. What he did publish was often well received. For example, in 1974 he was selected for the First Annual Holocaust Memorial Award for his paper “Bogus Manhood, Bogus Honor: Surrender and Transfiguration in the U.S. Marine Corps.” (Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, 1977)

People who met Chaim Shatan only in the years after his traumatic 1993-1994 health problems, saw a short, slightly hard-of-hearing, stooped man, dependent on a cane as a result of a back operation that left him with some paralysis. His vigor surprised those who first met him but not colleagues who knew him well. They saw a man who was determined to keep moving and learning.

Chaim Shatan was unembarrassed in his quest to know. He learned some Albanian from the immigrant staff of his Central Park West apartment building and biography from the Psychohistory Forum’s Biography Research Group. Even if he sometimes had to arrive a half-hour late because of his slow perambulation, he asked questions and made his points, rather than sit quietly in the back of any room.

He was a lifelong socialist who always had compassion for the underdogs of society and liked to say, “I love an uphill battle.” Regrettably, just surviving amidst multiple health problems was making life too much of an uphill battle. His heart gave out on August 17.

We wish to extend our condolences to his four children, six grandchildren, and his wife Norma, who was kind enough to help with this obituary during this time of terrible loss. Colleagues wishing to send their personal condolences may contact her at <>.

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