ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW - NICHOLAS YOUNG, M.D.

Dr. Nicholas Young’s oral history interview with Edward Nersessian, M.D., is part of the oral history project of the Archives and Special Collections of the A.A. Brill Library, New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

 

The interview is prefaced by the remarks Dr. Nersessian delivered at a lecture by Morton Reiser, M.D., in honor of Dr. Young in 2006.

To paraphrase the Roman philosopher Seneca, “It is not how long you live, but how well you live.”  Nicholas Young did both.  A passionate man by nature, he expressed his ardor in his relationship and in his work.  While his intense love of Mimi was the primary source for his pleasure in life, he also loved her family, his friends, psychoanalysis and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.

When I began my training at this institute, psychoanalysis was still the dominant force in psychiatry, and being accepted as a candidate at NYPI, the most sought-after program in New York, was a source of great pride to me.  This was the time when Nick, having already served on various boards and committees of the Institute, including the Curriculum Committee, was the chairman of the Education Committee.  It was a powerful and influential position, and Nick filled it with integrity, elegance and grace, paying close attention to all aspects and details of curriculum, progression, graduation and appointment to faculty, (all the while upholding the most rigorous standards).  At the same time, he was a sought-after clinician who helped many analysts grow and develop, and until the end, was a valued supervisor whom colleagues would consult on their most difficult cases.

Nick’s contributions were not limited to the administrative and clinical realms, and it is in his role as teacher that his influence was most felt by many at this institute.  His name as a teacher became almost synonymous with dreams; one could hardly say Dr. Young without simultaneously mentioning the dream course.  He began by teaching the first year dream course, and then followed in the footsteps of Otto Isokower, taking over the clinical dream course and continuing with it for some 20 plus years.  I came to know Nick while in this class and then had the good fortune to continue studying dreams with him in a monthly study group that lasted nearly ten years.  He generously opened his home to us, with Mimi supplying delicious and plentiful food, and Nick, wine, liquor, cigars, and essentially all I know about dreams.  His insights about the dream work were impressive to me and my colleagues, and his quick, incisive reading of the dreams we presented inevitably revealed aspects of our patient’s inner life that had eluded us.  He also initiated us into his own special way of reading and understanding the two volumes of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.  I think it was Nick’s abiding interest in dreams and more specifically, what he called the mental state of the dreamer, his particular way of emphasizing the way that time and place get represented in the dream relationships, and the way he related all this to the structure of the mind that shaped what was to later become my interest in neuroscience and its relationship to psychoanalysis.

I have mentioned Nick’s seemingly boundless generosity, and I would like to also touch on another special trait, his absolute lack of self-pity.  Nick was born on the border of Rumania and Hungary and as a teenager was sent to Basel to study.  He was in Switzerland when the holocaust began, and his whole family was lost.  Advised to flee Switzerland, he made his way across Europe, crossing France, Spain and Portugal before eventually finding asylum in Cuba.  Despite these and other tragedies in his life, he never dwelt on past misfortunes and had the rare talent of extracting an interesting story from the most painful situations.  He found irony and humor in life and, as anyone who knew him will attest, could always be counted on to supply an apt joke, delivered with impeccable timing.  And, I would be remiss if I did not mention Nick’s especially fierce sense of loyalty.  He was steadfastly protective of his family and friends, always ready to defend them and unforgiving when he felt they had been wronged.  I felt fortunate to be counted among his friends and feel my life was enriched by the times spent with Nick and Mimi in their home, our home, and various European cities.

While Nick could be charming and very funny, he could, in turn, be very tough.  Brilliant himself, he expected intellectual rigor from others and was intolerant of imprecise thinking, especially as it pertained to revisions and additions to psychoanalytic theory.  He didn’t contribute to the body of psychoanalytic literature not because he lacked ideas – as any of his students would confirm – but rather, I suspect, because he would not write anything he felt was less than an indispensable addition to psychoanalytic theory.  His exacting standards made him very critical of the works of others, and he could be quite dismissive of many papers we would discuss together.  It was therefore no small surprise to me when I mentioned Dr. Reiser’s book on “Memory, Mind and Brain:  What Dream Imagery Reveals” that Nick responded by saying he thought it was a “good contribution” to psychoanalytic thinking.  He didn’t endorse it 100%, which I’m sure Mort being the scientist he is wouldn’t even expect, but the words “a good contribution” coming from Nick was high praise.  So, when it came time to choose a person for a lecture in Nick’s honor, these words came back to me and led me to invite Mort to be tonight’s speaker.

 

Click here to view Dr. Edward Nersessian's interview with Dr. Nicholas Young.