ABSTRACT
When I first met Mert, in 1946, he was 32 years old—only 3years older than I—but he seemed much more my senior than that. Only 8 years had passed since he had received his MD from the University of Chicago, where he also did his undergraduate work. After an internship at Michael Reese Hospital, he had gone to Topeka to take a residency at the Menninger Clinic, then a much smaller and less famous place than it has become since. He had first become a staff member and, by 1946, had for a year been Chief of the Outpatient Department and had newly become Assistant Director of the Research Department, David Rapaport's right-hand man. Moreover, he was almost through his psychoanalytic training; he graduated from the Topeka Institute the next year—a pretty rapid rise for someone so young, but no one spoke of Mert as a “boy wonder” or “whiz kid.” He was mature for his years, and clearly possessed not only intellectual brilliance but a charismatic personal quality that drew people to him from the beginning.
