Working, Laughing, and Learning Together (memorial)

Psychohistory brought us together. Henry Lawton and I met in about 1976 at the Institute for Psychohistory and talked more at the first IPA meeting. We were both founding IPA members who lived close to each other in New Jersey and drove to various meetings together. Before long, we started meeting regularly on a monthly or weekly basis for lunch to discuss psychohistory, his clients and self-analysis, and psychoanalytic ideas. We met in Hackensack where he worked, just across the river from Teaneck, where I was in psychoanalytic training and practicing at the Low Cost Clinic.

Soon we started going to local museums and historical sites, walking through 17^th and 18^th century Dutch and English churches and graveyards in Bergen County and thinking about the lives of the people involved in them. We would drive together to Institute for Psychohistory and Psychohistory Forum Saturday meetings in Manhattan, stopping to pick up bagels, lox, and cream cheese to serve between the morning and afternoon sessions. Sometimes we would invite a colleague to drive with us. On the ride home, we would analyze the session and plan future meetings or publications.

Henry’s enthusiasm for scholarship, especially about cinema, was as contagious as his laughter. When he relaxed, he had a great smile. One summer we started an information research service together. He would spend hours in front of a Xerox machine photocopying articles and even whole books that he could not afford to buy at the time. I joked that his house might fall in from the weight of his research materials—and that was decades before he could not use his walker easily because the overflow of books on the floor blocked the way. I also kidded him that one of the adolescents he had rescued from abuse and bureaucratic ineptitude had become his “second daughter.” He really cared about his clients.

After his retirement, his body began to fail him. At 6 a.m. one morning enroute to the IPA from his home, I was horrified when, as I walked in front of Henry ready to catch him if he fell forward, he just fell over backwards onto the flagstones because his

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muscles had given out. Yet, he went on that day to work the registration table and gave his usual presentation at the conference. For Henry’s March 2003 Featured Scholar Interview for Clio’s Psyche, Bob Lentz asked him about his work with me, a question and answer I did not include in the published interview. I will conclude with it and my answer.

“Over the years Paul has been helpful to my growth in many ways. Perhaps without realizing it, he helped me know that I had to go my own way and, more importantly, that I could. I will always be grateful to him for that. I hope that I have given him something in return as well.”

Yes, Henry, you certainly have given me a great deal throughout the years.

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