Rudi Ekstein, when he came to Chicago, called himself “Rudi Appleseed.” This captured his humor, his sense of wandering and his adopted America. He was a regular at the Orthogenic School, Dr. B. (Bettelheim) and he bantered warmly, even as Dr. B. insisted that the milieu was more useful for severely disturbed children than individual psychotherapy (at the early phases of residential care). Rudi, transplanted from Topeka to LA, now sporting Hollywoodish frilly tuxedo sleeves and collar, although tieless, leonine headed with full hair, was a physical counterpoint to bald Dr. B. Both were short, both were brilliant, dedicated pedagogues, clinicians.
In Chicago, one case discussion was at a local residential center whose director was trying to ‘liberate’ the institution from Bettelheim’s ideas. At first the young presenter began with a typical, tedious recitation, something like, “This is the seventh institutionalization for this nine year old, blah blah blah and etc….” Rudi stopped him. Asked him to tell a story. Tell a story from the boy. The presenter,surprised, said that the boy’s favorite ditty is the spider who swallowed the fly, which buzzed about inside the spider until he had to spit out the fly.” From this, Rudi suggested that this boy was the fly and he would try to buzz round the inside of this institution, as he had in others, as he had in his family, until he got spit out again. How to help this fly, fly straighter, then.
Whenever Rudi came to Chicago, I presented to him for private supervision. His “fee” was to ask me to drive him from one meeting to another. He rode in my beige (the dealer called it gold) slant-six Dodge Dart, well-dented, like a crushed beer can in a ball park. Dr. Ekstein, commenting on the accolades he received, described himself, while sitting next to me in the “gold” chariot, as “eine Krone, ohne Wurzlen,” a crown without roots. In later years, he summered in his Vienna, even as he candidly spoke of its complex anti-Semitism and (former) intellectual fervent.
When he discussed my cases, I felt as if a laser beam was cast into the dark recesses of my own mind; things made sense; I could return to work with that child better than before. When he came for dinner, he glanced at my bookshelves and noticed that I had but one of his books, “Children of Space and Time, of Action and Impulse.” Feeling upbraided, I got another, “From Learning of Love to Love of Learning.” The titles alone capture a sense of warm humanity. Decades later, I owned Ekstein and Wallerstein’s book on supervision, this time accompanied by tales of Ekstein from Bob Wallerstein. My great fortune.
We carry here two essays on Rudi: one by Dr. Fisher, a cultural historian, another by Dr. Benveniste, a historian of psychoanalysis.
*Click Here to Read: The Relationship and Debates Between Bruno Bettelheim and Rudolf Ekstein on the by David James Fisher on the haGalil website on February 9, 2012.
Click Here to Read: A Bridge Between Psychoanalytic Worlds: A Dialogue with Rudolf Ekstein by Daniel Benveniste.*
This article originally appeared as: Benveniste, D. (1998) A Bridge Between Psychoanalytic Worlds: A Dialogue with Rudolf Ekstein. The Psychoanalytic Review. 85(5). Republished in the Carter-Jenkins Center Website (2006). and appears here with all requisite permissions.