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Stephen A. Appelbaum, PhD (December 15, 1926-April 6, 2000)
Dr. Stephen A. Appelbaum died Thursday, April 6, 2000, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the age of 73. He was in New Mexico attending the annual meeting of the Society for Personality Assessment, where he participated in a memorial tribute to a recently deceased friend and colleague, Dr. Martin Mayman. It was Mayman who had inspired Appelbaum to seek postdoctoral training at The Menninger Foundation following the completion of his PhD in clinical psychology at Boston University. Menninger proved to be a wonderful setting for Appelbaum's professional development. Completing the 2-year postdoctoral training program in 1959, he joined the staff and undertook psychoanalytic training. He evolved from student to teacher and supervisor in short order, serving on the faculties of the postdoctoral program, the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry, and the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis. He served for a time as director of psychology for the C.F. Menninger Memorial Hospital. But administration was not his calling. He had no need for power and influence of a political nature, and he was impatient with bureaucracy of any sort.
To his students, Appelbaum was inspiring, encouraging, and intimidating. He could make anyone-including the authors of this memorial-feel dull-witted, intellectually lazy, and linguistically clumsy. The clarity of his thinking, the directness of his writing, and the incisiveness of his formulations of clinical process permeated every task he undertook. He quickly became part of the...