1 Interview with Jacob Arlow on his Relationship with Margaret Mahler By Alma H. Bond, PhD. Author of Margaret Mahler: A Biography of the Psychoanalyst June 8, 2003 “My relationship with her was almost exclusively professional,” Dr. Arlow quickly began. “I remember the paper I introduced her with at UJA. It was about children and very moving. She was a very interesting person, not run of the mill. I met her in 1941, at the Psychiatric Institute. I was a resident of psychiatry. She had just come over from Europe. For the first time the Psychiatric Institute was programmed for child psychiatry, specifically child analysis. We had a wonderful introduction to it.. Margaret arranged for a semi circle of the kind of children’s stools that you see in kindergarten. She sat on one in the center and the child patient would sit next to her. It struck me as incongruous, how you could get a child to talk in front of all those people. But as the session went on, everybody disappeared except Margaret and the little child she was talking to. Years later she said, ‘It must have been very difficult for you to understand me, with my awful accent.’ I said, ‘I don’t remember you having any accent at all during those interviews.’ “The weekly meetings with her were examples of child psychotherapy at its best. They were the highlights of our week at the Psychiatric Institute. Come to think of it, it was the only organized program of instruction to which we were exposed. Psychiatric training in those days was not as it is now. There was no real four year program in any particular institution. The course of our development was not favored by a structured form of curriculum. We had to do it on our own, so the experience with Margaret was a particularly enriching one. “I made an impression on her in a very unusual way. If you can imagine, before the day of 2 tape reporters, someone in the Psychiatric Institute had made available to us a wax cylinder recording machine, like an old fashioned phonograph recording. There was a central waxed tube. As you dictate the message, it was imprinted on the tube and then you could play it back. It was a new gadget, and one that usually intrigued child patients. I think I was the only one of the residents that used it, although I may be mistaken. I had a very interesting young patient, an aggressive ten or eleven year old boy. He was intrigued by the machine. After a few playful runs to show him how it worked, I began to engage him into the details of his fantasies and his behavior. Mahler was completely taken with what I brought to her. So I made a very strong and lasting impression. “This may be looked upon as self serving. Years later, she said, ‘You were the most talented student I ever had, and I thought you would be just right for child analysis. Why didn’t you become a child analyst?’ My answer was not completely genuine. I said, ‘I never thought of it. If you had told me, I might have done it.’ That’s not quite true. I had a busy practice and was raising a family. It was no time to make the significant sacrifice that training in child analysis would have entailed. “I don’t know how much you have learned about the child analysis wars in the New York Institute. I was not involved directly in them at all, but I realized there was a disrespect for Margaret. There was a split between Mahler and Berta Bornstein, who had the support of such important people as Marianna Kris on her side. For the longest time, as far as I can recall, the voice of Mahler was not heard much in child analysis discussions in New York. The rejection moved her to put down teaching rules in Philadelphia for child analysis. She was a no-nonsense lady, and said things straight, as she thought them. As a result I’m sure she experienced many 3 painful moments at the meetings of the New York institute and elsewhere. This was equally true of Anna Freud, when she gave some seminars in NY, and repeatedly rebuffed Mahler with the things she had to say. There was something about Anna Freud which was part of their interaction. This didn’t just apply to Margaret Mahler, but to former analysands like Erik Erickson. Recently, for example, there was a big Anna Freud meeting in Philadelphia in a church which had a huge capacity for the audience. The meeting had been structured around Anna Freud. It consisted of two days of panels, in which Anna Freud and others participated. There was an interesting contrast of how Anna Freud reacted differently to other people. At the time Heinz Kohut was still in line and was for the moment a favorite of Anna Freud’s. The panel was composed of Anna Freud, Kohut, and Martin Stein, a down-to-earth, straight from the shoulder psychoanalyst, who saw things and described them as he saw them. She was dismissive, and would not even bestow upon him the usual collegial acceptance which ordinarily is a part of every panel discussion. It was almost painful to deserve how Erickson behaved like a little boy trying to ingratiate himself totally unsuccessfully with a rejecting parent figure. I don’t recall if Margaret participated in the meeting. There was a time, however, when Anna Freud appeared at the New York Institute, in at least one session with her and the faculty. I can still see a picture of Margaret Mahler on the first row, first seat to the right, and I have a feeling that some kind of rebuff was administered to her at that time. Anna Freud used to have a biennial or annual reading at the Freud center in London, where a select group of analysts were invited to attend and participate. I remember Margaret listening attentively, but I do not recall exactly what interchange there was between her and Anna Freud. 4 “Shortly after my first heart attack, I went to that meeting. Not a whiff of reference to Margaret Mahler was made. I remember being in the library where the meetings were held and looking for her books. I don’t recall coming across more than one. “What divided them so deeply is hard for me to imagine, but the division was complete and unequivocal. “After that, there was very little that I did along scientific lines with Margaret, except that I found more occasions to refer to her clinical work than to that of Anna Freud. I was surprised or reminded recently when I came across some of my papers how much I had been influenced by Margaret’s formulations. I recently was looking over some of the items in my bibliography, and was not at all surprised to see that in every paper that I wrote about children Margaret Mahler was probably in the bibliography. But professionally I had very little to do with her after that time. “We remained friendly socially all the time. It was a great age of psychoanalytic cocktail parties, so that friendships remained within the age level of your colleagues. Our relations were always cordial, but I had a distinctly different position than most of the other colleagues, in so far as I was a commuter analyst. It was a time when my children were growing up. I was living in Great Neck and practicing in the city. There was a period for two or three years when I had my office in the same building as Margaret. “That reminds me of a common link to Margaret. Bluma Swerdloff was another occupant of the same building. We were friends during our college days, and were both members of a group of young Jewish kids being trained by the Bureau of Jewish Education, financed by several Jewish philanthropists to assume the leadership of Jewish education in the United States. 5 “I’m a littler different with my elders than with people of my age. For instance in a study group that several people and I established with Hartmann, Kris, and Lowenstein, I could never get to call Hartman Heinz, the way Charlie Brenner could. “Margaret was so straight forward; maybe that’s not a good thing in an analyst. I never saw her in a temperamental outburst, but it is easy to see that she was not a woman who was easily crossed, especially if she was in control. She was a difficult person, but I didn’t reach the degree of working together in intimate projects, where such flair-ups are likely to occur. “I think she was an important contributor to psychoanalysis, mostly because she was such a keen observer. I never had the feeling that her scientific ideology overrode the conclusions that she drew from observing the direct situation. Her work stands the judgement of time, like so many other psychoanalytic concepts.” “Dr. Arlow,” I said hesitantly, “I know you said you wished to discuss only your professional relationship with Dr. Mahler and not your personal one. But I would like to ask you one personal question. Please don’t answer, if you don’t want to. (He remains silent. I continue.) “I was told that you were in love with Margaret Mahler. Is that true?” “Who told you that? It must have been Leo Rangell. He was the only one who knew me well enough to say such a thing.