Getting To Know Him

I first met Dr. Vamık Volkan at a conference at Princeton that a colleague and I planned in the spring of 1973. Many papers were sent to us by their authors—female and male, psychologically oriented and historically inclined, as well as a variety of academics interested in our topic, “Psychological Dimensions of Near Eastern Studies.” In the course of selecting the papers to be given at the conference, I was casually informed by a friend that there was a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst down at the University of Virginia Medical School by the name of Vamık D. Volkan who would make a great addition to the conference. To our extremely good fortune, Dr. Volkan accepted our invitation.

On the first day of the conference in May 1973, I had the task of chairing the opening session on psychology. At a point close to the closing of that session, a psychologist of Near Eastern origin was having a difficult time fully comprehending the meaning of D. W. Winnicott’s tri-partite psychoanalytic conceptualization of human development—symbiosis, separation, and individuation. Volkan took the baton to make this central concept meaningful for those in the room who were having difficulty with Winnicott’s enlightening insight.

Addressing the audience and abandoning the more psychoanalytic language, Dr. Volkan began a comment. What if an American and a Turkish mother brought their young children who had just begun to walk to a playground? If the American child fell down while walking, the American mother would sit there and wait for her child to get up and start walking again. On the other hand, if the Turkish child fell down, the Turkish mother would immediately run to her child, pick it up, then put it on her lap and not let it down for the remainder of the playtime.

With much applause for Dr. Volkan, I brought the opening session to an end with the following words, “I want to thank Dr.

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Volkan for his most helpful comments. I always thought that I had a Jewish mother—now I know I had a Turkish mother.” From that session in 1973 to this day, Volkan and I have been close friends. We discovered that we had written similar papers on Mustafa Kemal Atatũrk’s women. We discarded these papers and have since published many articles and books together. Eventually, Volkan created a small, but varied group consisting of psychoanalysts, doctors, academics, men and women with foreign service experience, and others, to see if we could work with people in other countries who wanted to learn more about psychoanalysis, politics, and government from a psychoanalytic perspective. We worked from Dr. Volkan’s home base, the University of Virginia’s Medical School.

First, we were interested to see whether we could work in the Soviet Union. Since the Soviets had swept psychology to the bottom of the academic pile, we wined and dined, but then were told that we would not be able to carry out our objectives. Our hosts suggested that we try the Lithuanians. Watching and listening to Volkan’s attempts to get Lithuania’s highest politicians to accept us was, in itself, a great education. We helped them by suggesting various ways they could get the Soviets to remove their remaining troops from Lithuania, but they too sent us on our way. We hoped to do better in Latvia, but Riga’s Russian population outnumbered the Latvians to the point that we would be unable to get Russians and Latvians to work together on any project we might have suggested.

Finally, we were welcomed in Estonia. A number of academics, politicians, and others invited us. Some Swedes were already helping several Estonians to become psychoanalysts. From our years of work in Estonia, I learned a great deal from Dr. Volkan about a variety of issues dealing with psychoanalysis, diplomacy, politics, and more. We learned a lot from watching, listening, and discussing matters with him. For everyone in the group, those years were a gigantic learning experience.

There is one more item I would like to enter into this short tribute to Dr. Volkan, the psychoanalyst, story teller, humanist, mensch, and friend. That is a mention of several of the books we have written together. One is a book on Turkish-Greek relations published in 1994. Another, with the co-authorship of Andrew W.

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Dod, is a psychobiography on Richard Nixon (1997), and our most important book, The Immortal Atatũrk (1984). It has been a great pleasure and joy to work on these, and other books, with Vamık Volkan. He has earned and merits each and every medal and prize he has won. My prize has been to have him as a friend and associate since 1973.

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