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Lisby Mayer, December 5, 2004
To speak in memory of Joe Weiss is a true honor. To have known Joe, studied with him, presented cases to him - to have been inspired by him and been his friend was and still is an honor.
He was an extraordinary man. As I thought of how to capture something of how I saw him, I found myself with the word warrior on my mind - warrior in the most gloriously powerful and gentle sense of a top-flight black belt in the martial arts, one whose attunement to subtlety, to nuance, to the other is so highly developed and so keen that it creates its own sphere of influence, rippling out in ever-growing, ever-widening circles. They go on and on, those circles of Joe's influence.
Joe will go on. And on. He was that superb martial artist who knew how to take the energies of the other and move with them, respond to them, utilize them, cherish their power - then turn them to astonishing and unexpected purpose. Maybe most of all his being was dedicated to taking the destructiveness he saw around him and deflecting the power of the destructiveness. Watching him do that was like watching a Tai Ch'i master at work - one who is so aware, so viscerally attuned that one tiny flick of the wrist sends the enemy reeling backwards, stripped of the power to injure. That flick of the wrist draws on a different kind of power than destructiveness and so did Joe.
On the other hand, he was no Pollyanna. His art showed that. He had a wicked wit and could be a son-of-a-bitch when called to it. He was tough. Some of that toughness came from his respect for the sheer brute power of destructiveness as he knew it in himself and others. He took it plenty seriously, which was part of why he could take it on and wrestle with it the way he did.
He taught us how to do that with patients and showed us how to do it with ideas. The key was how he stuck with the struggle until turning things to good purpose was accomplished. He had a deep, deep faith that some good purpose was there to be liberated, whether in the profound self-destructiveness of a patient or some hopelessly outmoded adherence to a treasured psychoanalytic idea. He stuck with the fight doggedly, with that inimitable mumble we'll never forget. He was a genius at doing that. He was a genius especially in how he located the urge for love lying beneath destructiveness.
Love was at the heart of things for Joe. Certainly love for his family. Also for his friends, students and colleagues. He wrote us notes - piles of them. There were notes to mark an occasion, to thank someone for an invitation, to comment on some out-of-the-blue, thought-provoking idea. I remember those notes arriving - brief, precious, always to the point. He bothered to write the notes. That was love. I think we can say he loved his patients. It was a love so genuinely serving those patients that he gave it freely and patients could receive it freely, purged of the exploitative, self-gratifying temptation that makes us shy away from naming anything as intimately as to call it analytic love. Joe not only gave it. He taught it. He helped us name it in groundbreaking, conceptually creative ways.
He was a giant of a man, Joe. We'll miss him deeply and daily, with profound gratitude for his generative presence on this earth.
- For Stan Steinberg's thoughts about his friend Joe, click here.
- For Jessica Broitman's remarks at the memorial, click here.
- For Paul Ransohoff's remarks at the memorial, click here.
- For Martha Walter's remarks at the memorial, click here.
- For Michael Bader's remarks at the memorial, click here.
- For Suzanne Gassner's remarks at the memorial, click here.
- For a Rembrance from Neil P. Young, click here.
- For a Rembrance from Isa Sammet and Joseph Brockmann, click here.