ARTHUR HYATT WILLIAMS by Sarah Greaves
Arthur supervised my clinical work for many years.
When I first saw him I had as part of my caseload 5 very difficult patients
– 2 of whom were murderous – in the literal sense.
The learning for me was beyond belief – entering territory and
a depth of understanding that I had not known existed.
I think one of Arthur’s talents was not to flinch at the hate,
envy and murderous feelings in all of us (some of us, of course, being
more murderous than others) and by extension in all of our patients.
He would drive right into it and take me with him. Along with this was
his respect for all human beings – less so for those with developed
characteristics of arrogance and patronization. But even there he did
not lose his humanity.
This respect for others and acknowledgement of hate, envy and greed
in its many forms – scapegoating, wrong footing, interruption,
sneering, and mockery – the ‘little murders’ was astutely
tuned ,as well as his capacity for recognizing love, tenderness and
gratitude. It meant that he was capacious - he did not grab the moral
high ground thereby diminishing others, but instead moved towards comprehension,
humility and respect, integration and meaning.
Nor did he seek to own the truth as he was calmly and stoically committed
to the pursuit of truth.
For him as his favourite poet, Keats said
‘Truth is Beauty, and Beauty is truth.
And for me Arthur stands for integrity – he will always be my
pole star.
He often came up to Cambridge to speak at the Psychoanalytic Forum.
Gianna came also. What a team! Isca Wittenberg and Meg Harris Williams
came up as well. They have never been forgotten – the glorious
days of psychoanalysis: benign Gods who were generous with their time
and in their teaching.
During our supervision time together, my life partner who had known
of my murderous patients and had stated emphatically , “Arthur
Hyatt Williams is your man.” , died very suddenly from a heart
attack. This was in the context of the father of my son and former husband
having died and my daughter’s father and former husband dying
a few months later. Following this misplaced and mistimed catastrophe
Arthur was one of the few people I could be myself with.
I believe that in that time when he continued to be my teacher that
through my patients and my development as a psychotherapist his belief
in me and our discourse saved my sanity and my life and therefore contributed
ultimately to the well-being of those around me…
Therefore, as well as recognizing the life-denying and more ugly parts
of the human psyche, I learned from him not to ever deny loss in its
many forms in myself or in others. Moreover, he somehow gave me strength
to psychically survive my own small holocaust – not by finding
alternatives or diversions but by suffering the pain of it and eventually
letting the meaning surface. He believed that an efflorescence could
occur after such catastrophic events. I do think that genuine suffering
leads to learning and that an efflorescence, a creative rush, is possible
but I think that what Arthur brought out in me was the capacity to think
relatively honestly and to experience a pleasure and satisfaction in
finding meaning in the world inside me and around me.
As an example of the process of grief and loss Arthur quoted this poem
by Dylan Thomas.
The Conversation of Prayer.
The conversation of prayer about to be said
By the child going to bed and the man on the stairs
Who climbs to his dying love in her high room,
The one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move
And the other full of tears that she will be dead,
Turns in the dark on the sound they know will arise
Into the answering skies from the green ground,
From the man on the stairs and the child by his bed.
The sound about to be said in the two prayers
For the sleep in a safe land and the love who dies
Will be the same grief flying. Whom shall they calm?
Shall the child sleep unharmed or the man be crying?
The conversation of prayers about to be said
Turns on the quick and the dead, and the man on the stairs
Tonight shall find no dying but alive and warm
In the fire of his care his love in the high room.
And the child not caring to whom he climbs his prayer
Shall drown in a grief as deep as his true grave.
And mark the dark eyed wave, through the eyes of sleep.
Dragging him up the stairs to one who lies dead.
Being a lover of poetry Arthur communicated through it and when he
was ill I used to read to him his well-loved poems and receive his grateful
response and gesture.
This poem, which we did not share in his life, is what I would like
to read to him now but I also think that there are many people here
who would share along with myself what it expresses
It is a translation by William Cory of verses by the 3rd century BC
poet Callimachus on hearing of the death of his friend, another poet
Heraclitus.
Heraclitus
They told me, Hereclitus, they told me you were dead,
They brought me bitter words to hear and bitter tears to shed.
I wept, as I remembered how often you and I
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, the nightingales, awake:
For death he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
Sarah P Greaves (Sally)