Obituary: Sander M. Abend (1932–2021)

Following several years of major health challenges, Sander M. Abend died on September 17, 2021, at the age of eighty-nine.

Sandy, as he was known to all, was born in the Bronx, where he grew up in an apartment building shared with his extended family. He was a precocious child, reading at three, and passionate about sports. He went on to graduate from DeWitt Clinton High School at sixteen, the University of Louisville, and then the University of Chicago Medical School.

We first met at the University of Chicago, where I was an undergraduate while he was a medical student. A few years later, when I came to New York as an intern, he was a senior resident in psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I applied for their residency and he was assigned to try to recruit me. He failed at that task, but we established a friendship that lasted for the next sixty-three years.

Sandy entered the Navy, had a tour in Japan, and then returned to candidacy at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, where he graduated and soon became a member of the faculty and a Training and Supervising analyst. He was strongly identified with a core group of senior analysts, including Charles Brenner (with whom he shared an office). Sandy’s published collected papers are titled Contemporary Conflict Theory (2019), the concept that symbolizes that core group.

However, Sandy was differentiated from the others by his interest in alternative schools and his study and exploration of their teaching and practice. Sandy liked study groups and was devoted to them, both within the world of contemporary conflict theory and across its boundaries with other psychoanalytic schools.

Sandy served in leadership positions at both the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations. He was a member of the Editorial Board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, served as its Editor from 1985–1991, and then as a member of its Board of Directors until his death.

Sandy had passions other than psychoanalysis: music, sports (especially golf), Japanese culture, and history (especially the American Civil War). He was devoted to his wife, Carol Lindemann, and his two daughters, Sara and Lisa. My wife, Verena, and I accompanied Carol and Sandy on a trip to Israel and were witnesses to their reaffirmation of their marriage vows in 1997, in a room in the King David Hotel overlooking the Old City.

Sandy coped with major health challenges: an acoustic neuroma in the 1970s—and, more recently heart surgery, cancer, and others.

We will not be able to fill the empty space that he leaves at the Quarterly, in several study groups, in the profession, and in our hearts.