Pre-mature Anti-fascist

By Leslie Pratch

I first spied Dr. Hilkevitch on corner of 51st and Woodlawn, at the bus stop for the #2, from Kenwood to downtown Chicago. It was 1989, my first year as a graduate student in clinical psychology at Northwestern. Dr. Hilkevitch stood on the West side of the street; most of the others, on the East side, where the stop had a covered bench.

What caught my eye was how he stood apart. The driver always picked him up first then gathered the rest of us. As the weather grew chilly, he migrated from tweed to cashmere but always wore a beret. He must have been in his late 60s. We didnt formally meet until one wet snowy winter morning. The #2 was very late. We all trudged up through the slush to catch the alternative. I chewed out man in the timing booth. How were we to get to work on time if the bus didnt come? Then the #2 arrived. I found myself sitting next to this remarkable man. His first words to me were One must have faith even in the CTA. He had me nailed.

That was the start of a wonderful friendship. Everyday on the bus I sat next to him. Why did he prefer the West side of Woodlawn? I am not a lemming.

He was a psychoanalyst, originally from Odessa. My own fathers parents were from Russia, and like Dr. Hilkevitchs, fled when the Bolsheviks took power. But my father died before I was six and his father, shortly thereafter. My grandmother barely spoke. Through my relationship with Dr. Hilkevitch, I tried to put together many pieces of my fragmented past.

A year later I received a car, a gift from a friend, and drove Dr. Hilkevitch to work daily. He was a wonderful teacher and during those rides I learned much. Motives are never pure. Suffering is always absolute. Terminate once you lose your therapeutic attitude. (The sword of Damocles is dangling over your throat he announced to one patient, whom he kicked out shortly thereafter.) The goal of psychoanalysis is to cut away the underbrush so that patients can make their own choices. The freedom to choose is core to my belief system. He also gave me the inside scoop on the training analysts and the politics of the Institute from roughly 1945-1985.

Dr. Hilkevitch got his B.A. from the University of Chicago and went on to Medical School at the University of Chicago but was kicked out when he and some classmates exposed an accounting scandal. Through the intervention of his father, he earned his medical degree from the University of Illinois.

I benefitted from his harsh lesson. During a training year, I was on thin ice for being openly critical of a supervisor. That was when he taught me about dysfunctional loyalties. Thanks to the perspective he imparted, I made it through. It was only later that I connected his empathy with my situation with the lessons he learned from his own medical school rebellion.

I moved out of Kenwood for my post-doctoral fellowship. When I returned to Chicago, he had had moved to a co-op where he lived above his old friend, Len DePres. I visited Dr. Hilkevitch on Sunday afternoons. Occasionally, I consulted him about clients. He listened with fierce intensity then cut to the chase: What a baby! Hes worried about his mother? What man puts his mother before his wife? I hope to carry the intensity of his listening to my clients.

Always he had something for me to read. He bought me an anthology of works by writers on aging, The Art of Growing Older, compiled by Wayne Booth. He also gave me the autobiography of Frank Kermode, Not Entitled. It took my breath away. He loaned me all his Horatio Hornblower books, which I devoured, along with many books of a serious nature. He never gave me anything to read about psychoanalysis though we did go to lectures together). Everything I learned from him about analysis was through his stories.

He was frequently impatient with me. I did not understand his reading of Marxism. In business school, which I started immediately after getting licensed, I tried sharing von Hayek with him. What was most amazing was the quality of his anger. I never felt personally attacked even though he was often irritated by my obtuseness. But I also think he didnt want to understand. He was aging. By then, our connection was non-verbal. He loved chocolate milk and fried chicken gizzards from Harolds and I indulged. He always called once a week and said he was thinking of me; when was I going to visit? When I did, he would share a passage from the New York Review of Books or we would listen to Dvork or Sibelius. Sometimes we just napped on a lazy summer afternoon, he on one couch, and I on another.

Dr. Hilkevitch joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in 1937. When he died in 2008, he was one of the last surviving members of the Brigade. After he died, I found Premature Anti-Fascist which helped me understand his motivations and those of his contemporaries who grew up between 1914 and 1918. Dr. Hilkevitchs memories were of hiding with a book while bombs exploded.