Free In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel Page A

in Beyond the Pleasure Principle:

     
    3–3 The central nervous system.
     
    The deficiencies in our description would probably vanish if we were already in a position to replace the psychological terms by physiological or chemical ones….
     
    Although most psychoanalysts in the 1950s thought of mind in nonbiological terms, a few had begun to discuss the biology of the brain and its potential importance for psychoanalysis. Through the Krises, I met three such psychoanalysts: Lawrence Kubie, Sidney Margolin, and Mortimer Ostow. After some discussion with each of them, I decided in the fall of 1955 to take an elective at Columbia University with the neurophysiologist Harry Grundfest. At the time, the study of brain science was not an important discipline at many medical schools in the United States, and no one on the NYU faculty was teaching basic neural science.
     
     
    I WAS STRONGLY SUPPORTED IN THIS DECISION BY DENISE Bystryn, an extremely attractive and intellectually stimulating Frenchwoman I had recently started to date. While I had been taking Hausman’s anatomy course, Anna and I had started to drift apart. A relationship that had been very special for both of us when we were together in Cambridge did not work as well with her in Cambridge and me in New York. In addition, our interests were beginning to diverge. So we parted ways in September 1953, soon after Anna graduated from Radcliffe. Anna now has a highly successful practice of psychoanalysis in Cambridge.
    I subsequently had two serious but brief relationships, each of which lasted only a year. As the second relationship was breaking up, I met Denise. I had heard about her from a mutual friend, and I called her to ask her out. As the conversation progressed, she made it clear that she was busy and not particularly interested in meeting me. I nevertheless persisted, pulling out one stop after another. All to no avail. Finally, I dropped the fact that I came from Vienna. Suddenly, the tone of her voice changed. Realizing that I was European, she must have thought that I might not be a complete waste of her time and she agreed to meet with me.
    When I picked her up at her apartment on West End Avenue, I asked her whether she wanted to go to a movie or to the best bar in town. She said she would like to go to the best bar, so I took her to my apartment on Thirty-first Street near the medical school, which I shared with my friend Robert Goldberger. When we moved into the apartment, Bob and I renovated it and built a very nicely functioning bar, certainly the best among our circle of acquaintances. Bob, a connoisseur of scotch, had a fine collection, even including some single-malt scotches.
    Denise was impressed with our woodworking skill (mostly Bob’s), but she did not drink scotch. So I uncorked a chardonnay and we spent a delightful evening in which I told her about life in medical school and she talked about her graduate work in sociology at Columbia. Denise’s specific interest was in using quantitative methods to study how people’s behavior changed over time. Many years later, she applied this methodology to the study of how adolescents become involved in drug abuse. Her epidemiological work was of landmark proportions: it became the basis for the gateway hypothesis, which holds that particular developmental sequences underlie progressively more severe drug use.
    Our courtship was amazingly smooth. Denise combined intelligence and curiosity with a wonderful capability for beautifying everyday life. She was a fine cook, had excellent taste in clothing—some of which she made herself—and liked to surround herself with vases, lamps, and art that enlivened the space in which she lived. Much as Anna influenced my thinking about psychoanalysis, Denise influenced my thinking about both empirical science and the quality of life.
    She also strengthened in me the sense of being a Jew and a Holocaust survivor. Denise’s father, a gifted mechanical engineer,