Memorial for Clara Mayo, SPSSI President

Journnl of Social Issues, Vol. 39, No. 3, 1983

Memorial for Clara Mayo, SPSSI President Marianne LaFrance Boston College

Someone once said that in every lucky life there is a teacher who places their finger upon our soul. Clara Mayo touched my lucky soul. I met Clara when I was a very young and very green first year graduate student. I was 22; she was 38. She could never quite remember how old she was at any one time however, reporting her age, if asked, the same as the last time she had been asked even if it was now two or three years out of date. Age never much mattered to Clara. Good ideas did, whomever or whatever their source. Students were treated as colleagues and not just as people who needed to be taught to be interesting. Clara treated students from their first day as people who possessed qualities of mind and experience from which she could learn. Moreover‘Clara gave so much of her own clarity and sophistication to any discussion that other participants in it also felt they possessed the same clarity and sophistication. I was her “student” in part because of a calculation that she made early on in her graduate school days. She sat down and figured out how many people she could potentially influence in a lifetime as a teacher or as a therapist. The numbers obviously favored teaching. Moreover it was never a question of qualitative differences. She assumed teaching to be as deep and involving as therapy. Season after season, old students returned for a recharge as new ones were connected to the source. Early on in my graduate student status, Clara gave me something of hers to read and comment on. I took her request seriously, if not moderately, and was highly critical. She listened. A little later she asked again for my reaction to something. In pattern, I jumped on it with the fervor that only academic novitiates can muster. Again she listened minus resistance. This was her pattern. When questioned about this unusual reaction to criticism, she replied that it was always better to know. On her own bulletin board was a direct statement of this stance. It 153 0022-4537/83/0900-0153$3.00/1 0 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

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Marianne LaFrance

read: “Spare me the undemanding relationships-those that do not probe or impose but simply relieve, accept, distract and amuse”. On the flip side, Clara listened to every idea I had and commented on every word I wrote over the 12 years I knew her, Sometimes she had heard the same ones so frequently that she could quote whole papers of mine from heart. She responded from the heart with its vast supply of consideration; she responded from the head with its vast store of erudition and she responded from the pen with its endless supply of “purple prose”. I miss her editorial response to what I am saying now. She would know how to make it better. I had the great good fortune of collaborating with Clara. Some of our colleagues commented over the years that our method of working together was inefficient. It is true that we did not parcel out chapters or divy up writing tasks. We wrote literally side-by-side, writing over each other’s shoulder, finishing each other’s sentences. This produced a constant switch in handwriting that drove our secretaries crazy. It was and is with pride and pleasure that we were never able to say afterward who wrote what. She told the truth about this particular brand of collaboration however. It is not for the fainthearted, requiring as it does a thick skin but one that is also permeable. But it is for those who see collaboration as being something more than simply being functional. Clara was a model, a mentor, and a muse to me as she was to a large number of women both inside and outside psychology. She knew how to help without instilling dependency, how to praise without proviso, how to be involved without taking over. She knew about sexism from the inside-out and she knew about racism from the outside in. To both she brought intellectual acuity, professional integrity, and personal commitment to reduce their grip. When it came to the issue of discrimination, Clara’s involvement was longstanding and unflagging. This quality of durability applied to everything she did. Clara was a complete teacher, an indefatigable colleague, and a collaborator par excellence. For those of us who had the opportunity to encounter her on any of these grounds, we found a more resonant sounding board than seemed possible. Clara’s famous clipping service kept all of us up to date and her capacity to locate just what we were looking for (even if we did not yet know we were looking for it) was truly astounding. Clara urged us to be engaged and she showed us how to think and act with subtlety, passion, detachment, verve, and yes with fun. Without her it will be difficult to do all of this but it is because we are without her that it must be done.