Control Mastery, Joseph Weiss, Joe Weiss | San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group

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Michael Bader - Eulogy For Joe Weiss - December 5, 2004

I’m going to talk about Joe from a patient’s point of view, and that point of view began 15 years ago with a 37 year old man looking for a training analyst as he was about to begin at the Institute, a man who was desperately unhappy in a terrible marriage. And when my first 3 choices for a training analyst didn’t work out, I reluctantly went to see Joe—my last choice. In fact, one of my colleagues told me “Weiss would be fine---unless, that is, you want an analysis!”

And he turned out to be right. I didn’t need or get an analysis in the sense he was talking about. Instead, I began an extraordinary process of personal transformation and intellectual growth.

And in our first session, 2 things happened that I suppose say a lot about me but I hope more about Joe.

First—he offered me coffee—and if you’re not an analyst, you might ask one later why that’s noteworthy.

And, second, in the middle of our session, I heard a loud conversation in the hall outside Joe’s office at the Institute. I recognized one of the voices and muttered: “That’s X—I can’t stand that sucker.” --- to which Joe responded: “Oh, no one around here likes him. He’s in my class next semester and I’m dreading it.”

It was love at first sight.

And my point here is that from the first moment I met him, Joe was on my side, not just in the way his theory dictated he be but in the sense that he was personally dedicated to it. When you were on his radar, you never doubted for a second that he would go to any length to figure you out and, more important perhaps, to figure out how he might be “OFF” the track, your track, and to get back on it. His commitment to this was relentless and extraordinary. It changed my life and my work as a therapist.

Here’s how far it went, and with this I’ll end today. In the last 6 months of his life, when Joe was impaired, the forms that his deterioration took were quite painful to me. But even then, you see, he fought to get on my side and help me resist, to fight back against the harm that he KNEW he was inadvertently causing me. He helped me articulate it, to validate it, to confront him about it, and to understand all of its many sources. I hope you can understand how profound that was and how much it expressed his commitment to stick by me, and to his other patients. And in so doing, he helped me touch a place that was at the heart of who I am.

And, as a result, my heart will never be the same.