Margaret Naumburg taught me Art Therapy. Some of her ideas have been neglected. One was to encourage patients to complete their work and turn it into a work of art, after it had been analyzed and interpreted. Another was to encourage patients to depict their feelings, using nothing but broad strokes of color, made with large rectangular pieces of colored chalk turned on their side. My fondest recollection of her is the fact that we could always tell what kind of mood she would be in, by the clothes she wore that day. They would all, from knee-length patent leather boots to feathered hat, be in exactly the same shade of color.

Chandler Montgomery was my mentor. He taught me about the "aesthetic-creative process," consisting of stages of "drive," "play," "incubation," "insight or illumination," "working through," "stepping back," "critiquing," and "completing," accompanied by a final "whoosh!" His specialty was a kind of existential arts education, using "found materials" to orient ourselves in space, e.g., "in front of," "behind," etc., and time, e.g., "before," "after," etc. As his students, we explored everything from drawing on film with magic markers, to climbing inside a piece of tubular jersey and creating living sculptures by pushing out with various body parts. I can still see his thin frame, his shock of white hair, his tweed jacket, plaid shirt, and dark knitted tie, head cocked, tapping on objects made of different materials, listening to the sounds they made.

Jules Olitski taught me New York School painting, which includes both Abstract Expressionism and Color-Field painting. He also taught me about the ghosts of images that hover above a painting, even after the original image has been obliterated.

Sidney Handelman was my Reichian analyst. One of the images I retain of him is his sitting on a chair next to the mattress I was lying on, chomping on his cigar, urging me to "breathe!" and to "let go!" Sometimes we would discuss some of the intellectual material that came up after I expressed my emotions, but only as an afterthought.

Isadore From was my Gestalt therapist and provided supervision when I began to practice. He was both a philosopher and a therapist, and I was initially drawn to him when, at the end of his eulogy for Fritz Perls, he said simply "Now it's time to say thank you and good-bye." When I eventually asked him what he thought was the secret of his success, one of the things he told me was that he had "read everything."

Apropos of my experience in Reichian therapy he said "I don't care what you feel. Tell me what you think!" Whereas Handelman was not above a certain amount of "physical persuasion" when it came to getting me to breathe ("No pain. No gain."), Isadore would sometimes ask "Are you aware that you are holding your breath?" He taught me about "unfinished business," the "flight into health," if something is important enough it will come up again, "What's the worst that can happen?" "On the other hand?" etc.