Home > IAPSP > Marian Tolpin

Marian Tolpin

Obituary

Nationally and internationally prominent psychiatrist-child psychiatrist-psychoanalyst, Marian Tolpin, M.D. died peacefully at her home in Glencoe, Illinois on June 10 after a valiant battle with lung cancer. The American Psychoanalytic Association was about to name her the Psychoanalytic Woman Scholar for 2009. Dr. Tolpin was a faculty member and training and supervising analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical School, and a faculty member and supervising analyst at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York City. In addition to being a founding member of the International Council for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, she served on the editorial committee of The Annual of Psychoanalysis, on the editorial board of Progress in Self Psychology (which became the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology), and was a reader for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. With her late husband, Paul Tolpin, M.D., she was co-editor of Heinz Kohut: The Chicago Institute Lectures. Constantly in demand, she discussed scores of papers at professional conferences, participated in and presented countless workshops here and abroad, and authored almost 40 other original papers and chapters for psychoanalytic and other scholarly books and journals.

Dr. Tolpin had been active professionally for over 50 years, teaching, supervising, and seeing patients, and was at work on a book elaborating her most recent contribution, "Doing Psychoanalysis of Normal Development: Forward Edge Transferences," just weeks before she died. She had long taken issue with theories that focused on pathology to the exclusion of co-existing normal development and was devoted to helping others recognize their patients' "fragile tendrils" of reanimated health. In the 1960s and 1970s when her career was just beginning and Heinz Kohut was already a well-established psychoanalytic leader and respected authority, she was part of Kohut's inner circle. She worked closely with him, as he developed the ideas that culminated in the creation of a new psychoanalytic perspective—Self Psychology (delineated in Kohut's The Analysis of the Self, The Restoration of the Self, and How Does Analysis Cure and in his papers, The Search for the Self). When Kohut first developed his theory, the idea that a "nascent self" existed from the beginning of life seemed radical and was roundly rejected by many in the psychoanalytic community. Passionately interested in normal development, Dr. Marian Tolpin was one of the psychoanalysts who helped Kohut find his way to his groundbreaking thesis, a view later confirmed by infant observation and research conducted after his death.

Marian Tolpin was an iconic figure to friends, family, and colleagues, a woman of keen intelligence, unfailing vitality, and good humor, whose remarkable professional productivity was balanced by her expansive warmth, joyous spirit, and great generosity. She was always interested in younger colleagues, ready to take them and their ideas seriously, and to welcome newcomers into the psychoanalytic community. A treasured story, told by her late husband, Paul, involved her early psychoanalytic paper, "On the Beginnings of the Cohesive Self" (Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 26: 316-352). She had sent the paper to Kohut for his comments but when he called on a Sunday to speak with her she was busy baking and asked Paul to tell Kohut that she couldn't speak then, lest the cake be ruined. Kohut replied, "If the cake is in any way nearly as good as the paper, it will be delicious!

Dr. Tolpin is survived by her daughter, Maria Tolpin, her son, Jim Tolpin, their spouses, and three grandchildren, her sister, Shirlee Bernstein, her dearest, lifelong friend, Dr. Elaine Hacker, and a stricken psychoanalytic community. She was widely and deeply loved. A memorial service was held on Sunday, July 20th at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, 2430 N. Cannon Dr., Chicago, Illinois.

Back to top