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We barely had our MSWs in hand in 1980 when my friend Nancy suggested it. An amazing notion. We could approach Paul Russell for supervision. He lived around Boston; we each sort of did. Why not call him and ask? I knew the bit of money I was earning could buy groceries or a book. It hadn't occurred to me before that moment that $35 could purchase access to a supervisor and a formative experience.
We had each, one year apart, studied with Paul at Smith, in a class in which we read a mix of classic and contemporary psychoanalytic papers: Winnicott, Modell, Loewald, Kohut, Freud-among others. The course was popular. And it was anomalous. In a summer program short of time, crammed with mission and ideology, where acculturating students into a profession was essential work, Paul's goal was to set us loose. He encouraged our minds to float into the updraft of impossibly complex, irreconcilable, paradoxical, urgent ideas-to contemplate them, twist them like so many prisms, and then to make sense of them or at least describe their refracted light. I for one, but typical of many, found the experience ecstatic. He'd assign a paper. We'd read it. When we'd reassembled, he'd pose some essential question from the text, and we'd set off pondering. Paul was tall, physically substantial though of average weight, very New England, with a high forehead, straight light brown-gray hair that often looked a tad windblown, eyeglasses but eyes that met yours directly. He dressed seemingly without vanity, khakis and a sports shirt in summer, Wallabees (gum-soled shoes then popular with academics), and looked the teacher he was. He had a way about him, a gently smiling pleasure in any intriguing notion or sincere speculation, which kept us at work deepening our observations. His manner encouraged participation, particularly since his own delight was palpable. You'd say something. He'd mull it and pose a further question. While I'll speak in any group, many of my classmates were more sensibly selective. Paul's own excited receptivity called them forth. Usually silent students found themselves speaking to him. And conversations continued outside class. I remember my friend Susan speculating for days on how and why eating ice cream represented a perfect experience of...