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

ANNOUNCEMENTS

DVD AVAILABLE

Visit our Resources page for instructions on how to order the DVD: Psychotherapy Case Formulation from the Perspective of Control-Mastery Theory w/ George Silberschatz and Susan Badger.

SPEAKERS AVAILABLE

SFPRG is happy to provide speakers on Control Mastery theory to groups of therapists, students, or other interested parties. Contact the office to make arrangements.

NEWSLETTER SIGNUP

Newsletter Archives

LOW FEE PSYCHOTHERAPY

Seeking low fee psychotherapy? Any person seeking psychotherapy and unable to afford private fees is eligible to request consultation from the Clinic Program. Click here for more information.

For Joe's Memorial - 12/5/04 - Paul Ransohoff

My lifetime with Joe has as its bookends two smiles-one disappointing and one reassuring. First the disappointment-when I was three, Joe was coming to visit us in Cincinnati. My mother was excited, "You're going to love your Uncle Joe! His smile goes from ear to ear!"-This I had to see. When he came in the room and sat down on the floor, I commanded him to smile. He did, and my heart sank. The edges of his lips inched out just barely from their starting place, and got nowhere near his ears. I refused to have any more to do with him.

The reassuring smile came the night before Joe died. He was weak, only able to sustain brief moments of contact. I went in to see him, was sitting beside him, patting his hand and talking to him. I told him that everyone loved him. He looked at me and whispered, "Thanks," then closed his eyes. A faint but distinct smile lifted up the corners of his mouth. In the years between those two smiles I came to understand the meaning of my mother's figure of speech and to appreciate and value the joyful and playful attitude which Joe embodied.

I want to tell you some family legends about Joe, but first I want to provide an answer to a burning question that many people have wondered about: Why did he dress so, shall we say, "nonchalantly"? First of all, he was totally unmaterialistic. But there was a simple, underlying equation-Joe's father was a dandy, and Joe was a rebel. Joe's father, Hiram Bertram Weiss (or "H. B." as he was known), was a self-made man, a prominent physician in the Jewish community, who was proud to dress the part-and Joe would have none of it. This same formula accounts for Joe's rapid speech and mumbling. H.B. spoke in a slow, authoritative, self-satisfied manner-which drove Joe mad-on top of which, Joe thought too fast to speak slowly.

Joe was an almost mythical figure in our family. He was known for his intelligence, artistic talent, wit, and independence. His brilliance was casual and offhand. When he was an undergraduate, his youngest sister, Martha, resented Joe's effortless success in the same classes in which she labored, while he rarely attended lectures. Because of the war, he graduated from medical school before he completed his BA. Having a few months before his internship, he returned to Harvard to take the necessary classes. Just before commencement, he was informed by the math department that he was still one course short. He asked the professors to give him the textbook for any class of their choosing, and he would take the exam the following day. He studied, he passed, he graduated, and was in the front row when Gen. George C. Marshall announced the Marshall Plan at Commencement in 1945.

Joe was miserable as a medical intern. He hated the exhausting hours and already knew that he was headed for psychiatry. Out of boredom and frustration, he and his roommate painted a mural on the walls of their hospital quarters. Its theme was "Hell," and depicted monsters, goblins and infernos that rivaled Goya. The director of the hospital was not amused and ordered it painted over-but not before it was photographed and written up in the local papers. Joe had a tremendous impact on me when I was a young adult. Coming from a long line of physicians, I treasured Joe for providing living proof that you could not be an internist or surgeon and still be an upstanding citizen. Joe was unfailingly encouraging to me both personally and professionally.

Some people think of Joe's theories and clinical approach as too blithely optimistic and positive. His sense of humor and high spirits were not based, however, on a denial of our darker side, of pain and misery. He occasionally said that anyone who heard everything that other people said behind his back would feel like killing himself. He once told me what he called the "saddest dream I ever had." The dream was of the sun slowly rising, then, just as it got up over the horizon, sliding back down again. Joe personified youth, optimism, curiosity and irreverence. It's a terrible pain to think or speak about him in the past tense. He always surrounded himself with bright young people, eager for give-and-take with them. I think that Joe cherished and valued the spirit of the rising generation in any era. He relished his moment in the sun and, both by precept and example, he encouraged everyone he knew to do the same.