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94  february 20, 1999 “I wished he’d been as understanding and kindly at home with his family as he was in the world with all his associates.” I n the early 1970s, at a meeting attended by a host of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, Erik H. Erikson (then at work on Gandhi’s life and on political activity as it is engaged, sometimes, with minds, even souls) spoke to us, eagerly assembled, about his intellectual struggle to make sense of a great leader. (The book was eventually published as Gandhi’s Truth.) He also spoke about his “troubles” with a particular individual much admired throughout the world. Erikson was a child psychoanalyst, trained by Anna Freud, who in Vienna during the 1920s initiated applications of her father’s thinking to therapeutic work with children. “When I learned about Gandhi,” Erikson told us, “I kept wondering about his wife and children—and I have to admit, I worried about them.” I was listening with a tape recorder at hand, because I was working on a biographical study of Erikson. I helped teach in a course he gave at Harvard College, joined his seminars, and heard him speak to audiences whenever I could. That time he was especially candid and poignant as he shared his concerns, provoked by a writing project. “I had to have  95 something out with him [Gandhi],” he told us, and then this: “I sat there in a daze, unable to put on paper what was crossing my mind—until, I felt the need, the desire, to write this man a letter. He was dead, but he was certainly alive in my mind, and finally, there I was writing a letter to him—I told him (to be brief) that I wished he’d been as understanding and kindly at home with his family as he was in the world with all his associates and followers, and yes, with his enemies, the ones he was confronting and opposing.” I can still see, with those words spoken, Erikson’s head lowered, even a momentary shake of the head—irony and ambiguity as almost heart-stopping in their capacity to give us much reflective pause. Erikson did, however, proceed; he spoke of Gandhi’s spiritual and political triumphs, no matter his not altogether happy personal life as a family man—and of course, many of us in that room weren’t totally surprised, because we’d seen such a disparity in many of our apparently successful young or older patients: smashing achievement in schools or college or in the worlds of law, business, medicine—yet, all the while, a failure to measureuphumanlyandthereforemorallytotheaccomplishmentsbeing accumulated in classes or workplaces. Yearslater, thenovelistWalker Percywouldsummarizewhat we were discussing at that meeting when he described a character of his in The Second Coming as one of those people who get all A’s and flunk ordinary living. And I recall well Erik Erikson trying to say as much—though not as pointedly, and not with such a catching punch—when he mused: “It can happen that the qualities that make for good in one part of someone’s life don’t necessarily have the same effect on that person’s ‘other life,’ you can call it.” He became suggestive then—made mention of the “secret side of many brilliant people,” or the “cost” of such accomplishments to 96  others,thoseforsakenorignored,eveninsultedorinjured—amelancholy matter for all of us to ponder. Still, our lecturer wanted to move us in another direction, stir us as he’d been stirred while he got to “know” Gandhi, as it were, through reading him, taking in his letters and essays, his remembered remarks. And so forahalf-hourormoreweheardabout“grace,”itsworkingsandexpression in a life as it connected to other lives. A remarkable spell descended on us, I recall feeling, as that presentation took place, and after it, our responsive discussion. Unfortunately, however, the word “grace,” as Erikson eagerly and relaxedly used it, caused evident perplexity in certain of his listeners, who began to move in their chairs, even whisper to one another. Finally, when the talk was over and we were all given the chance to raise our hands and address the speaker with questions or comments, a prominent psychoanalyst asked “what grace means,” and then others, following the lead, posed further questions. They wanted to know the “source” of grace, its “origins in child development,” no less. I could see Erikson flushing, moving his right hand through his ample white hair, telltale...

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