Newsfeed > Gerald Jay Aronson Obituary
Let us begin by hearing from Gerry:
“My house in the earliest years was three houses from the Long Island Sound and then a later house bordering Sheepshead Bay. Beyond the Bay was Terra Incognito reached by a wooden bridge—the non-Jews, Italians and Irish, the library, prehistoric lobsters, live crabs and noisy, well-endowed hawkers. You could saunter the Peninsula singing the alphabet of streets without fret or care. Walking to school was a pilgrimage to the East, the run home a rag-tag parade of untucked shirts, with frequent stops for close examination of new puddles, old weed patches and the ‘haunted house.’ And, then, to stickball and Hebrew School, where I discovered early the real task was not to understand the words but to read strings of them as fast as you can without pausing for breath. When I achieved my Bar Mitzvah, I wrote a well-reasoned, but passionate tirade, full of rhetorical flourishes; ‘Thunder on the Left,’ I called it. I don’t even remember considering myself unfortunate even though sober reflection might have it otherwise—unable to hear well or speak understandably, losing my mother at three and a sister at four—it seemed to me that what I needed I had and that what I admired and enjoyed was in the public domain: friends, a baseball mitt, great relatives, a wonderful older sister, a kind father. It was a sort of Prince of the City feeling without thinking of it that way. Could I get a girlfriend? Sure. Would I like to be on a fencing team? Yeah, take some lessons and see.”
And, we continue:
Gerry began his life in a home on a peninsula jutting into Long Island Sound, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of David Aronson and Bessie Schenkman Aronson, both Jewish immigrants from Russia. His mother died after an extended illness in his earliest years (as did his sister Adele). He was raised by his beloved father, an older sister, Myrtle Aronson Karp, and his stepmother, Minnie Gample Aronson. Gerry’s father co-founded Fierst and Aronson Dry Goods in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Gerry was characterized by a wide-ranging curiosity and powerful desire to share with others what he understood or was trying to understand. He saw himself in an excerpt from T.H. White’s The Once and Future King: “The best thing for being sad...is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn—pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a million lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics—why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”
And learn he did, from observations, reading, discussion, and friendships. Gerry also loved to share what he learned with others. Gerry had a particular interest in Albert Einstein and delivered a series of presentations based upon his understanding of Einstein’s discoveries and his efforts to understand Einstein’s psychology. His study of Einstein combined three of his joys: human psychology, physics, and mathematics. Gerry’s passions were diverse; he burst into song as he ‘conducted’ Beethoven’s Eroica in the family living room, piloted an airplane while in Topeka, attempted to master fencing, studied the constellations in the night sky, and pursued the origin of words and the meanings behind not only human behavior but the likes of the symbology of the Greek pillar’s capital.
Gerry was devoted to what he considered the greatest triumph of psychoanalysis, ‘the normal story interpretation’—that sense could be made of what seemed peculiar and frightening in human behavior. Dr. William Menninger, “Dr. Will”, was an ideal consultant during his training at The Menninger School for Psychiatry. Gerry wrote about the synchrony between himself and Dr. Will: “His affability, combined with a fierce ambition to make ‘Freud work’ made him an ideal consultant for me. His was an easy practicality, a common-sense application of Freudian understandings to patients and their families.”
This interest in human behavior was evident in his casual study of those in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Let us hear from Gerry again: “I remember Irving who lived down the block. He was very intelligent, unawarely so. Small, energetic, always friendly, he was into everything technical—particularly microphotography. He taught me everything I came to know about the subject, as did Irwin, my best friend, who had the additional virtue of living next door with two beautiful sisters of gentle disposition and huge musical talent. Summer was made glorious—through the open window floated Sybil’s cascade of piano melodies. Their father judiciously, tenderly, sourly, fretted over their 12x10 front lawn; glowering with bug-eyes toward any child who cut across the pampered greenway.”
Gerry enjoyed many successes over his lifetime: earning a B.A. as well as a M.A. in Statistics from Cornell University (where he was also selected, amongst other university students, to participate in a clandestine project during WWII to decipher Nazi codes), a M.D. from New York University College of Medicine, a Rotating Internship at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, followed by psychiatric and psychoanalytic training and a staff position at the Menninger School for Psychiatry, Topeka, Kansas, and military service as Chief of the Mental Health Clinic at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He moved with his wife (Jan Furst Aronson) and their three children (Lisa, Ellen and Ruth) to Los Angeles in 1955, where he established a private practice in psychiatry. Gerry was amongst the group of ‘Menninger Transfers’ admitted to the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (LAPSI), where he completed his psychoanalytic training in 1961. He served as a Senior Faculty Member and supervisor of psychoanalytic candidates as well as being a sought-after discussant and presenter of psychoanalytic content throughout his career at his home institute (renamed New Center for Psychoanalysis). Gerry lent his intellectual might to psychoanalytic study groups and his courses on Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and technical aspects of psychoanalytic theory were highly valued. He continued a private practice in psychiatry and psychoanalysis and supervised psychoanalytic candidates into his 90’s. In addition to his affiliation with LAPSI, Gerry served as: Clinical Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles; Consultant to Camarillo and Patton State Hospitals; and Consultant Psychiatrist to The RAND Corporation Social Science Division, studying the behavioral aspects of decision making as well as law enforcement interventions during domestic disputes. He was a Member of Phi Beta Kappa and a Diplomate of the National Board of Examiners and American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He belonged to the following professional societies: Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute, Southern California Psychiatric Society and the American Psychiatric, American Psychoanalytic and International Psychoanalytic Associations.
In addition to enjoying many meaningful friendships over his life span, Gerry also contributed to the work of his close friends and colleagues including Phil Holzman, M.D, one of the world’s preeminent scientists in schizophrenia research; Milton Wexler, PhD, a psychoanalyst and founder of the Hereditary Disease Foundation; Herman Feifel, PhD, a leading thanatologist and editor of the classic Meaning of Death, to which Gerry contributed the chapter “Treatment of the Dying Person”; Fred Charles Ikle, a RAND Corporation colleague and leading social scientist and defense expert, with whom he co-authored “On the Risk of an Accidental or Unauthorized Nuclear Detonation”; Bernard Brodie, a military strategist and colleague within the Social Science Division of RAND Corporation; and Lester Luborsky, PhD, a founder of scientific research of psychotherapy and editor of The symptom-context method: Symptoms as opportunities in psychotherapy to which Gerry contributed the co-authored chapter “ Classical theories of symptom formation: Freud, Engel and Schmale, Goldstein, Angyal, and Seligman.” Gerry’s additional professional contributions include articles in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Journal of Intelligent Systems, Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books and Psychohistory Review.
Gerry was a beloved Husband, Father and Grandfather. Following a 2-week courtship, he married his wife of 70 years, Jan Furst Aronson (who predeceased him in 2018). Gerry loved beauty, especially his wife’s attributes, and her creation of the family’s home environment, proclaiming it a paradise. Theirs was a life filled with beauty, travel, warmth, family and challenges overcome. After completing his internship at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, the young couple drove across country to begin psychoanalytic training at the Menninger School for Psychiatry. This was a wonderful time for the young couple. It is where they began their family and where they made lifelong friendships. Lisa Beth and Ellen Gail were born in Topeka, and Ruth Ann was born Columbia, South Carolina, where Gerry was the Director of the Mental Hygiene at Fort Jackson. Following Gerry’s Army service, the family moved to Los Angeles to establish a homebase close to Jan’s parents (Hertha and Erich Furst), fugitives from Nazi Germany; and Gerry’s sister and brother-in-law (Myrtle and Jacob Karp), who were well established in Los Angeles by this time—Myrtle as the national vice president and chair of Hadassah and Jacob as head of Paramount Studios. Gerry’s parents joined them in California later. Jan and Gerry raised their family and continued to live in Southern California until their deaths.
Lisa, Ellen, Ruth and Gerry and Jan’s grandchildren, Emily and Joshua Kneeter, continue to live in California. Gerry and Jan live on in their hearts and memories.
A Memorial for Gerald J. Aronson will be held on October 2, 2022. Please find details through the New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles after September 1.
For direct communication to the family: lisabetharonson@gmail.com.