A Tribute to David Doolittle as He Embarks on a New Chapter

June 4, 2024 • By Tammy Feldman

On an afternoon in early May, I had the pleasure of sitting down with David Doolittle to talk to him about his life and career. David has been a central figure in the MIP community since its founding—he was the very first person to enroll in MIP’s inaugural class in 1989. Over the intervening thirty-five years later, David’s influence on the MIP community has been far-reaching. As president, David has served on the training committee and helped found the fellowship program. He has taught over twenty-five courses, supervised over thirty analytic candidates, and received the Paul Meyerson award. When I learned that David would be leaving the Boston area in June to move closer to his grandchildren, I contacted him for this interview to document and honor his contribution to the MIP community.

David was a teacher, supervisor, and mentor of mine. Through my experience working with and learning from David, I have found him to possess a truly unique combination of passion, devotion, intellect, and humility.

These qualities are on full display in our recorded conversation. What follows are some highlights from this conversation. Topics that we discussed include the founding of MIP and its allure as an alternative to a traditional model of psychoanalytic training. David also spoke about his analysis and its transformative role in his life. Here is David in his own words….

I asked David to talk about the genesis of MIP.

“There was a group of psychologists who were very, very interested in psychoanalysis and were unable to pursue analytic training because it was not allowed for people that were not MDs. A lot of them had or obtained what they came to refer as ‘bootleg psychoanalytic training’. They got supervisors. They took on cases. They went into analysis themselves.  They had seminars that they organized themselves. And basically, they found their way into learning the kinds of things that they wanted to learn. But of course, it didn't take too long before those folks said, ‘Well, why should we just do it this way? I mean, let's organize something”.

David continues:

“A particular person that I want to identify is Paul Meyerson….he was one of the very, very, very few BPSI people who were willing to be supportive to this new renegade group. I use the word renegade because it really did feel like that in the beginning, a fledgling organization that was trying to develop around analytic training. Because at that time, part of the formation and the impetus was that you couldn't get analytic training unless you were an MD.”

About Paul Meyerson, David continued:

 “He became a mentor of mine, and he was a wonderful supportive guy to me. He really was. When I talked with him one day about what he was doing with MIP and what did the people at BPSI think about that. He said, ‘Well, they don't like it at all’. But this is what was funny. He said, ‘I supervised half of them, and I analyzed the other half. What can they do to me?’”

By the time MIP started accepting applications for their first class of psychoanalytic candidates, BPSI had started allowing psychologists to apply for analytic training, but with many restrictions. This followed the famous 1988 lawsuit that forced psychoanalytic institutes to accept non-medical clinicians into training. David describes why, despite this change to BPSI’s policies, he still chose to pursue analytic training at MIP:

“As a psychologist, I felt like that didn't seem right because it felt right to me that we should be on the same footing as other mental health professionals like MDs. And I think I was also attracted personally, to the idea of something new. At that time, especially, the BPSI organization and curriculum was very standard within all of the American Psychoanalytic. Now, it's evolved, obviously, a lot in the many years since that time, but it was a very traditional model of psychoanalytic training at that time. There were training analysts, and many of us thought that there were complications and difficulties with the training analyst system. And there was a lot of concentration of power among the training analysts and the people that were in charge of the progression of candidates through the program. So, [I liked] the idea of something new. And of course, I'm a child of the '60s. I marched on Washington. I was tear-gassed. I never did get arrested, but I was pretty close to getting arrested. I mean, the protesting and advocating for new things was, I think, part of my blood, like it was for a lot of us then. And so the idea of creating a new form, a new structure for analytic training was very intriguing to me, and I think to a lot of people at that time. “

A little later, we talked about David’s analysis:

“I was deeply involved in that analysis, and I knew even when I was struggling that it was a life-changing experience…

“I think on the personal level, what was life-changing was my capacity to love. I just want to say it that way, to be close. My involvement with and access to my emotional life developed dramatically during that analysis. I think…. professionally, I learned so much about analysis, particularly about the transference, which is... We don't talk about it in quite the same way as it was in the early traditional era. But the experience of the transference as an alive thing in the present right now, not something at all about the past. It became vividly alive to me. Not only transference, but learning about the style of analytic engagement, the freedom to associate and to feel because of being freed from the vis-a-vis and having the space and time four times a week to be in the process for years”.

I asked David about his interest in Klein. This is what he shared:

“When I went through the curriculum, there was nothing on Klein. Zero. And partly that's because America and psychoanalysis took a long time to get interested, really, in things other than Winnicott, and certainly took a long time to get interested in things like Melanie Klein and the contemporary Kleinians. One of the things that I did, and a number of us did, actually, who were in the early group of candidates who then graduated, is after we graduated, we formed a study group. And I think there were six or eight of us that formed this Klein Study Group. And part of the reason we did that is we were very curious about Klein. And myself and a number of the others had started reading the contemporary Kleinians and were very interested in their work. Probably more interested in their work even than the Melanie Klein literature itself, because of the fact that that work seemed much more friendly to us in terms of technique and how we pursued and thought about and conducted psychoanalysis. So that group went on for over 20 years.

So I think a lot of us were really excited about the contemporary Kleinians because of the fact that we felt It's the result of the relational method, and it's really not a method. Relationality is like an approach or an ideology, almost. It's a conceptual mobilization. It doesn't have a lot of theoretical superstructure. Some, but not a whole lot. And leaves out a focus on things that a lot of us thought were important, like aggression and hate and destructiveness and that stuff. And of course, that's where the Kleinian oevre really felt right because of the fact that it contains all of that very, very rich and powerfully important set of ideas. And it also has this fascinating theoretical structure of the splitting and projective identification and the sense of the depressive position and the paranoid schizoid position. There was a very different theoretical superstructure there as compared with id, ego, superego, that felt much more experienced near and much more theoretically and much more clinically useful because of being more experienced near. So, yeah, we had a great time in the Kleinian study group. We really did.”

I asked David about his work in palliative care which includes training physicians and other clinicians, and treating patients. During this part of our conversation, David made a powerful statement about analysis:

“The beauty of analysis [is this]: no matter what the age of the patient, we get to be part of that, you know, excitement. Excitement and [the] growing process of a human person, which is so acute when the age is young. And one of the things that has been fascinating to me about end of life work is that the opportunities for emotional growth at the end of life are amazing, partly because the time is limited, and people know the time is limited and it loosens up things, you know? And it's possible to do things with patients that they probably couldn't have done when they were in the middle of their lives, you know?

But I think there are moments in life, severe illness, you know, birth of children, death of parents [that make growth possible]. The beauty of psychoanalysis is that the transference and the intensity of the transference process creates something like [these pivotal moments] and creates a flexibility of the structures of the mind and the emotional system in ways that new things become possible even outside of death or illness of children. These kinds of dramatic, powerful events of external life that then reverberate so strongly in internal life.”

Finally, I asked him about his plans to stay involved in the MIP community. In addition to offering a virtual course on end-of-life issues, he hopes to continue with the training committee. About this latter role, he said:

“I was one of the first two co-chairs of the training committee. And I think the training committee has always felt like my home in some ways, because of the fact that the place that I've been most captured by… is the process of the candidates’ engagement…and excitement in learning and involvement with their patients. And that's what the training committee is really all about is…the candidate issues, you know, and the candidate struggles and the candidate joys and frustrations. So I'm definitely going to continue on the training committee”.

Our time together soon after came to a close and I had the opportunity to listen to and reflect on our conversation. One theme that struck me was David’s profound sense of possibility. This comes through in his belief in psychoanalysis as a vehicle for transformation and the analytic relationship as an agent for change. This sense of possibility is also reflected in David’s embarking on analytic training at a fledging institute with no track record to speak of. Rather than focusing on the risk of an uncertain future, he embraced the possibility of this new venture.

While David will be missed, his legacy is certain to endure. We thank you, David, for your dedication and service to our community.