Interview with Dr. Manny Rich
Dr. Manny Rich is a psychoanalyst and psychodynamic therapist. He has been practicing in New York City for over 63 years. He is the author of Lust, Love & Whatever.
Mental Images
Contents
Max Raskin: So let me just give you the spiel that I give everyone. What we do is talk for about an hour and afterwards I’m going to take the transcript and edit it down. The only thing I need from you is a headshot, or any photos you want to share.
Dr. Manny Rich: [Points to self] Here's a headshot.
MR: Well, do you have a professional photo of yourself?
Dr. Rich: No, I don't have professional photos.
That’s the beginning of the interview.
MR: Why don’t you have a headshot?
Dr. Rich: I never thought of it. Didn't need it in 63 years. [The above headshot was taken after the interview.]
MR: What do you think about everyone taking pictures all the time of everything? Do you take pictures on your phone?
Dr. Rich: No.
MR: Do you take pictures with a camera?
Dr. Rich: If I want to take pictures, I carry two cameras. I carry a larger camera and a smaller camera, but I don't use my phone for pictures unless there's an emergency and that's all I have.
MR: What kind of cameras do you have?
Dr. Rich: Now, I have a Fuji and a Canon.
MR: And is it film or digital?
Dr. Rich: Well now it's digital. I used to have film cameras, but we switched to digital, so it's digital. Both are digital.
MR: Did you ever have a darkroom?
Dr. Rich: I always had a darkroom.
MR: Really?
Dr. Rich: Yes, and I always did my own pictures and I always printed them, and so on, and so on, and so on. But then I ran out of time, and a darkroom takes time, so I gave it up because I wanted to do other things. But I still take pictures.
MR: Did you ever paint?
Dr. Rich: No.
MR: Any other-
Dr. Rich: But, I got a free association for you.
MR: …give it.
Dr. Rich: I painted when I was six, and it was World War II, and I painted a big, gray tank, I remember, and I was in the picture as a hunter with a rifle next to the tank. That was the only picture I ever painted, and I think I was in first grade or kindergarten, I've forgotten which. But maybe I was five, I'm not sure.
MR: Were you the hunter? Was the tank on your side or were you hunting it?
Dr. Rich: Of course. You think I'm going to have a tank against me?
MR: …maybe.
Dr. Rich: That's grandiose.
MR: I'm reading this history of the Yom Kippur War and the Egyptians surprised the Israelis because they were able to destroy their tanks with infantry carrying RPGs and Saggers.
Dr. Rich: Yes, I remember that also.
Not in Brooklyn
MR: I want to talk to you about war, very briefly. Do you have memories of World War II?
Dr. Rich: Yes.
MR: What memories do you have of World War II?
Dr. Rich: Well, I lived right off the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and it was wartime. I remember going down there as a very young child with my mother, and it was a war zone. And as a war zone, it was very different than the rest of the city because we had SP patrols which far exceeded the New York City Police Department. So, we were on a war footing, and workers were coming back and forth and it was a busy bee of war.
The ships that were in the navy yard for repair always had their bugles at 5:00 AM in the morning – they woke the whole neighborhood up. So we all got up early in the morning, because if you're two blocks from the navy yard the bugles will wake you up also. It was a very different city in World War II, if you lived off the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that was a major navy installation with a hospital, officers' quarters. It was fantastically large. It was the major center for repair on the Atlantic coast.
MR: Were the soldiers local guys or from all over the country?
Dr. Rich: No, no. They were guys who either were drafted or enlisted, they were on the ships and they were on ground patrol.
MR: Was it a Jewish community that you grew up in?
Dr. Rich: It was a Jewish community with Italian and Polish.
MR: Were you aware of the Holocaust?
Dr. Rich: My family knew it. They knew it, others knew it.
MR: And did they talk about it?
Dr. Rich: Rarely, but in our family the basement of our building was a shooting range for the family.
MR: And what kinds of guns would you shoot?
Dr. Rich: Whatever they had. They had rifles, they had pistols. They were probably all illegal, but the family thought whatever happened in Europe was not going to happen in Brooklyn.
MR: Yeah. Do you remember the first gun you ever shot?
Dr. Rich: It was a .22 rifle.
MR: Do you remember the brand?
Dr. Rich: No. It was pretty heavy, I was pretty young, and it was pretty heavy.
MR: Do you remember the first pistol you shot?
Dr. Rich: Oh sure.
MR: What was that?
Dr. Rich: It was a Smith & Wesson 52-2 – a highly accurate, .38 Wadcutter target pistol, but really very effective and very accurate.
MR: What do you think draws you to shooting?
Dr. Rich: Well, that's very complicated, you see. I think it's partly romance, partly fear of being destroyed, and that it gave me some ability to fight, because when I was very young I couldn't imagine how I would survive. When I became about 13, I got my first illegal gun, because there was nowhere to get a legal gun, especially in the city of New York.
Catch .22
MR: When did you start collecting guns?
Dr. Rich: Probably as a middle teenager – 15, 16. Of course, then it was very difficult because it's all illegal. In the city of New York, even if you're over 21 it's all illegal. You can't collect guns in New York City. Pistol permits, I think initially they were unlimited, then they went down to three, and then they went down to one, because the city is pretty prohibitive for legal people. If you're legal, you're restricted. If you're illegal, you can do what you want.
So the legal guys – this is an opinion – are always screwed because they obey the laws, and if you obey the law then you're restricted. If you want to protect yourself, you take risks because it's not legal to protect yourself…that is not a good enough reason to have a gun.
MR: Let me ask you-
Dr. Rich: By the way, I'm still on the topic. I'm cutting you off.
MR: Cut me off.
Dr. Rich: I'm the interviewee.
MR: Yes.
Dr. Rich: In my day, high schools had rifle teams in the city of New York. And that was offered by the U.S. Army, because at that point they needed sharpshooters. Rather than blowing 17,000 bullets at the enemy, they wanted people to be able to effectively shoot the first time. So they provided the rifles and the ammunition, and they may have given the money for the city to build ranges in the high schools. Brooklyn Tech, to this day, has a range that was built for high schools.
So if you wanted to compete, everybody would go to Brooklyn Tech or an armory. Every armory has a rifle range to practice and compete. High schools would compete. We have an Olympic rifle and pistol team that competes and wins. Unknown now, because it's all banned on the East Coast. It's not banned on the West Coast, the North or the South, but on the East Coast you don't find it anywhere. It's not mentioned.
MR: Were you on one of those teams?
Dr. Rich: Yes.
MR: How good were you?
Dr. Rich: Decent enough at that time to knock off a dime at 50 feet.
MR: Wow. With a .22?
Dr. Rich: Yeah, if you did it larger you wouldn't see what you hit. And you always competed with .22's, you didn't compete high power. High power was for adults.
MR: Was it in between class? Instead of gym?
Dr. Rich: No, it was a club. You could be on a high school football team, the rifle team…
MR: How does that mesh with your belief in teaching civics? Were you patriotic when you were younger?
Dr. Rich: I'm still patriotic, whatever that means.
MR: Did you serve in the military?
Dr. Rich: No.
MR: When you were younger was the desire to shoot a personal desire, or was it a community desire?
Dr. Rich: Let's talk about layers, it's not one or the other. If you go down to the base of analytic layers, it could be phallic, if you're analytic. It could be narcissistic, to protect yourself, and save yourself. It could be a tremendous fear of being annihilated and unbeing. On the top you can say, community. You know, so I can say, "Yeah, yeah, I was community minded," but I always look for roots and the roots of it are put into society's social fabric, social network.
For example, I think there ought to be a draft. I think everybody ought to serve, if not in the Army, in some service that the government has – for the wilderness, for indigenous people – instead of putting all the money in the rest of the world, put the money into the United States. So that is probably narrow-minded, because you need it in both places, but if I had a choice and there was only X dollars, I would support our people. And I think everybody owes the country a couple of years of service, which used to be…it no longer is.
I think it's 1% of the population that's the armed forces? Well, I think that narrows the armed forces. I think they need all society. I think they need all kinds of brains, and when we have a draft Army, you have all kinds of brains.
MR: Do you think if you were growing up today you would join the military?
Dr. Rich: Yeah.
MR: Which branch?
Dr. Rich: Would make no difference – I'd go into intelligence. I know what I would do.
MR: What would you do?
Dr. Rich: I'd go into an intelligence unit.
MR: Naval intelligence?
Dr. Rich: Or Army intelligence – they got intelligence all over the place. Or I'd go into being a profiler, an analyst. If you look at the FBI requirements now, which were not there when I was of age, they want people like me for mental health. In order to do the mental health for the FBI, you have to pass the same test as a regular FBI agent, only your job is mental health. But if they needed you for other things they wanted you to be prepared, so they wanted you to have the same qualifications as everybody else, in addition to these skills. Well, that makes it very difficult to bring people into the FBI, because most people like me may not be able to follow the year training of the FBI, and they may not be interested. The salary's not so great, you know, it has to be a greater commitment. So, there's a need for people who have advanced degrees, or who have complicated thinking, who could do other things besides the field work.
Outsider
MR: Are you an outsider in either the psychoanalytic or the-
Dr. Rich: I'm an outsider.
MR: …psychodynamic therapy community?
Dr. Rich: Analytic community, English school.
The thing that saved me is that I rose to a very high position in the analytic field despite that. When I was the Associate Director of Postgraduate [Center for Mental Health], which was the largest analytic institution in the city, and commanded that institution for years, whether I was an outsider or an insider, people had to respect where I was going, in policy, procedure, administration.
MR: Did you discuss politics? Do you discuss politics with your colleagues?
Dr. Rich: No. Politics are one thing we don't discuss.
MR: Socially will you discuss it with them?
Dr. Rich: No. I'll discuss what I think. I was interviewed by some radio station on the street the other day, who wanted to know about what I thought about the $500 that the state of New Jersey is giving people as a bonus to go back to work, which I'd never heard of. You know, I thought it was just a bribe. I thought that it's a bribe, that people didn't have a value in working, and that we were infantilizing them, and that that's an error. The bribe will go from $500 to $1000, if we're desperate, what does that mean? The people who want to work are screwed, and the people who don't want to work get the reward? Here we go again with honesty.
If you really want to do the job, you're at the bottom of the barrel. If you want to schnorr and get as much as you can, you rise. Why is Medicare getting less benefits than Medicaid? What is the principle? The poor people can't afford it? Well the middle class is really struggling. Not seen, not looked at, ignored. These are the people who are doing all the right thing. Do the wrong thing, you get a little further.
MR: Do you think your politics-
Dr. Rich: It’s my views of society.
MR: Did you always have strong views on these topics?
Dr. Rich: Remember when I was a kid, they gave you your civics in the eighth grade. You took a year of civics whether you wanted to take a year of civics or you didn't want to take a year of civics. And I love to learn how it worked, the order of it. When I ran Postgraduate I was in charge of the plant. I was the COO, and the COO was in charge of all the programs, and all the professional responsibilities throughout the institution. Well that takes organization, that takes some finesse, that takes some firmness. You know, because you haven't got a choice if you're working for us, you do it this way, because we think this is a better way. If you can prove it's better your way, I'll listen.
MR: How does your training with respect to dealing with individuals complement your understanding of groups and organizations?
Dr. Rich: Well, I always believed in a multiplicity of theory, that one theory, unlike physics, does not really tell you about an individual, that you really have to look at the complexity of humans to get a real picture of what's going on and one theory will bind you and you won't get to where you want to go. So analytically I've learned five theories. Socially, I learned several things in sociology, anthropology. I actually ran a program that would broaden the views of analysts, that it wasn't just analytical. That was back in the '60s and '70s. Now there's a sense in some modern analytic institutions that you need all the rest. They speak of genetic, biological, social, environmental, plus the analytic theories. And there isn't one analytic theory. There are several analytic theories.
The Sixty-Minute Hour
MR: One of the things that I think about you is that you're very curious, and that you don't stop learning-
Dr. Rich: Well that's true.
MR: …where do you get your inputs from? So let me ask you this first question: what's the first thing you read in the morning?
Dr. Rich: The first thing I read is 200 emails that are always waiting for me, as soon as I open the computer. So that's the first thing I read. Is there anything in them? Usually there's one or two out of 200. But I scan the 200 because I get a total of about 400 a day. So I just zip through them for the one or two.
MR: Do you read a newspaper?
Dr. Rich: I have digital subscriptions both to the New York Times and the Washington Post. I really am scheduled very tightly. So what I do is I teach, and teaching takes hours of prep, and so I read various theories, various topics, and I'm always preparing for one class or another, because I teach three different kinds of classes. I teach “Analytic Theory,” which is a review of several theories, it's a major class. I teach “Sex, Addiction and Body Image,” which is another whole course, and I teach “Diagnosis,” which is an whole understanding of DSM-5, the psychiatric manual. So I read all of that.
MR: But you are aware of the news. How do you get your news?
Dr. Rich: At night, if I get home, the first thing I turn on is the news. As I wash up, I listen to the news.
MR: What channel do you watch?
Dr. Rich: Well, I don't stick to a channel, I go to CNN, MSNBC – I avoid Fox because it's an alternate reality, and I'm not interested in it. And PBS is my station. I'll always catch the seven o'clock news if I'm home.
MR: Throughout your years has there been a newsman that you particularly liked, that really resonated with you?
Dr. Rich: No, I know the names, but I'm interested in what people say. I must tell you that I don't zone in on the person, zone in on what they're saying. I'm very bad with all these figures and who they are, and what they're…Chuck Todd on Meet the Press has got so much press I can't avoid his name, Chuck Todd. But I like what the panels say, because they differ.
MR: But you don't yearn for the days of Walter Cronkite?
Dr. Rich: I don't yearn for anything because as I grew up it was a very difficult life. I worked from the age of 10 or 11 on, went to school, had whatever social life there was, but mostly was work.
Pre-Postgraduate
MR: When were you first exposed formally to psychology and then specifically to psychoanalysis?
Dr. Rich: When I punched a dean in the stomach at college. That's when. He was a very smart man; unfortunately, he died some years ago. After that little incident, he said, "You need help."
MR: Do you remember why you punched him?
Dr. Rich: No…I was crazy. I was some crazy thing. Makes no difference, it has no real meaning. I was crazy, in that sense, you know? I didn't have impulse control, to say the least. But I was still on the rifle team.
MR: I think that's a bad combination.
Dr. Rich: No, for me it wasn't, because it taught discipline. You can't fool around with a .22 bullet. Even if it's a .22 bullet you have to respect it and be disciplined. In any of the sports you need discipline, no matter what the sport is, if you're going to excel in it in some way, you need discipline.
MR: You have three D’s – what are they?
Dr. Rich: Desire, discipline, determination.
MR: Yeah.
Dr. Rich: Those are the three D's. Anyhow, so ask me a question.
MR: What happened after you punched him?
Dr. Rich: He got me a psychiatrist.
MR: Was it an analyst?
Dr. Rich: No, but he was an interesting guy, because he must have known something because I had no money. You have to understand there was no money.
MR: You were going to NYU at the time?
Dr. Rich: Yeah. But I had no money for treatment, neither did the family. We barely paid for NYU. There was a partial scholarship, blah blah blah.
MR: Really quickly, what were you studying at NYU at the time before you got interested in psychology?
Dr. Rich: I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a spy, so what was I studying? It made no difference. I just took the general, this was my first semester in college. So once he hooked me up with a psychiatrist, who said, "Listen, I'll make a deal with you young man," he said, in his German accent. He had the sword cuts in his face, you know, the honorable, when they dueled in Germany, you know, and he was one of those guys. He came from Germany. With all those things.
He said, "I'll make a deal with you." I can't even do his language. He says, "I trust you. You keep count of how much you owe me, and when you're making a living, pay me back." And he saw me for years, and I had this journal, and every time I saw him I put down what I owed him, and once I started work I started paying him back until I paid him back everything I owed him.
If he didn't do that, I couldn't go. I would have gotten some mediocre yaka hamba. And he introduced me to the Postgraduate Center, where I went, and they picked me up as an extraordinary crazy guy, who they had plans for, which I didn't know because I was still a crazy guy. And they introduced me into the analytic world, and they protected me when I went off and did something that people would usually be thrown out for. But they protected me.
MR: What would you do that they would throw others out for?
Dr. Rich: I would say things that people wouldn't say.
MR: Like what?
Dr. Rich: It makes no difference.
MR: Okay. What was the official name of the Postgraduate?
Dr. Rich: Postgraduate. That was the name of it. The Postgraduate Center for Mental Health.
Right, so it trained analysts, it trained counselors, it trained pastoral counselors, it trained dentists, it had a day-night hospital. I had a child's clinic, a group clinic, an adult clinic, it had a community division, it had a corporate division, and I was in charge of it all, eventually. As I rose up in the ranks I passed many people to get to my positions.
MR: Just going back to when you were first introduced to this. I'm curious about the first stages. Do you remember the first book you read about psychology?
Dr. Rich: It had to be Freud. It was probably Freud's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life or something. I read a lot of Freud because that's what you read. I read Stekel though. People didn't read Stekel. That's when I started to think, "Freud isn't the only guy." So I read Stekel.
Reading with the Third Ear
MR: Was that difficult for you to read as a young-
Dr. Rich: No.
MR: Really? It was not difficult?
Dr. Rich: It wasn't difficult for me. I would underline, I think that was before markers, you know these highlighters. I always have several of these in different colors. Before highlighters, I would use pencils and I would use ink and I'd make all kinds of lines and colors.
MR: You did marginalia?
Dr. Rich: I did marginalia all over the place.
MR: Do you remember, did you have a system?
Dr. Rich: Yeah, I know my system.
MR: What's your system?
Dr. Rich: I had one line, two lines, and three lines for importance, vertical lines next to sentences, I had outstanding phrases that caught my mind in a circle around the sentence, you know, just circle the sentence. And then as we got into, what are these called again?
MR: Highlighters.
Dr. Rich: Highlighters. I have green, red, yellow, blue, purple, and depending on what I thought, they would get a color.
MR: What do the different colors mean?
Dr. Rich: Well they had different meanings because what happened is when I would go back again and read, I would not read anything that didn't have a color, and then if I thought that that color didn't really enforce what I thought, I gave it another color, so that most of my books looked like coloring books, because once the highlighters came into be, I was a highlighter fan. And I can see my old books because it's pencil and ink. I can see back how I did it.
MR: So what did the difference colors mean?
Dr. Rich: Well, one may mean paranoid. One may mean this theory bears review, or “I don't understand” something got another color, I'd put a big purple question mark next-
MR: Yellow is sort of the standard highlighter, what does yellow mean?
Dr. Rich: This is orange. Yellow is not as bright as orange for me. So yellow is standard, orange is high, green is this is really okay, purple is what is this all about, and then I have blue, let me see what else I got.
MR: So orange you really want to remember?
Dr. Rich: I really want to remember most of it, but if I had to, if I was teaching, I would always go to this first.
MR: Oh wow, that's fascinating.
Dr. Rich: Then I'd go to yellow. And then I always took notes besides. I got tons of notes.
MR: Do you still do that to this day?
Dr. Rich: Yes, to this day, I have red ink, I have black ink, green ink, and when I wrote, if you ever saw notes, they're in different colors depending on what I thought at the moment about what I want to say. Of course, I might change it later on, but that didn't have a great meaning for me because as you develop you can see different things, and the more I could see the more I can choose from.
MR: When you sit down to read, how long will you sit down at a time and read for?
Dr. Rich: Until I know I can't think anymore.
MR: So how long might that be, an hour, two hours?
Dr. Rich: Depends. Depends on how much energy I have, it depends on the time of day, because I spend most of my time when I don't do physical things, reading, I watch very little TV and I do novels. I'm big on mystery, action novels, I don't read romance novels, and I read a lot of biography because I want to know about people who were able to get into a book in biography, autobiography. So I have famous people that I've read.
Practice in Theory
MR: And do you read a lot of theory now?
Dr. Rich: Yes, because I'm teaching it.
So it's not a theory…I read theory, meaning I have five favorite theorists, but there are many more.
MR: Who are your five favorite theorists?
Dr. Rich: Well you read Freud because he began it all, you read Klein because it's a whole different school, you read Winnicott because it's a modification and a difference than Klein, you read Fairbairn because he's quite different than all of them. You read Adler because Adler has a social kind of position. Adler did a lot of work at the 92nd Street Y, in the '20s and '30s, and I used to go to the Library of Congress where there are a lot of manuscripts that are nowhere else. So you find a lot of Adlerian stuff, you find all kinds of theorists just in the Library of Congress.
MR: I noticed Jung is not on that list.
Dr. Rich: No, I never went into Jung. First I went into intrapsychic, then I went into object relations, these are different positions, then I went into self theory. Jung encompasses a lot of that stuff but I'm interested in ego treatment, which is intrapsychic.
MR: Did you ever meet any of these people?
Dr. Rich: Well I was young enough to meet Mahler.
MR: Who is that?
Dr. Rich: She's object relations. I met a number of famous people because I was young enough and they were old enough but not dead yet. You know? So Edrita Fried was one of my teachers. The Wolbergs, who were quite famous in their day, were my teachers. Alexander Wolf, who was the father of group psychoanalysis, was one of my teachers. Peter Blos was "the" adolescent analytic theorist used by the Jewish Board of Guardians, and many other organizations to teach how to treat adolescents. Peter Blos was a major mentor of mine and I was his guinea pig because I presented every week for a year in his seminars at the Jewish Board of Guardians, and he would point out what I was doing right, what I was doing wrong. He put a theoretical bent on it, which I didn't know. I was just doing what I thought, and he taught me quite a bit about that.
You Must Have Patients
MR: How old were you when you first started seeing patients?
Dr. Rich: 20.
MR: 20?
Dr. Rich: That's what I just said. 20.
MR: Wow. Do you remember your first patient?
Dr. Rich: Yes. I absolutely do. What's more important is I charged $1 a session. That was my first patient. Second patient was $5 a session.
MR: Can you say anything about your first patient?
Dr. Rich: I want to say something about a certain patient who I've known from 1964 or '65, to this day.
MR: Wow.
Dr. Rich: I did a lot of government work, and I was hired by the government to work in a certain religious charity with the religious staff. I couldn't tell who anybody was because they wore these habits – uniforms – and all you saw was the circle of their face to identify them.
So I saw a whole group of them for a year, teaching them how to do better work in the classroom socially, because they didn't know how to handle children. They may have known teaching but they didn't know how to handle children, especially those who were rough. And I had started as a nursery school teacher when I was 19, or 18, and I was the only male nursery school teacher. In the nursery school it was mostly women. So I would get all the rambunctious three-year-old males, who were wild kids, from real lower class families, and I learned how to work with them. So I never got a girl after that, any place I went they would say, "He can handle the rough guys," whether they were two-year-olds or fifteen-year-olds, which is true.
Once they knew I was coming, that's where they centered where they needed the most help – the kids who were acting out. I worked in Harlem for a couple of years with gangs, back then, there was gang warfare in the late '50s. And I got one of the big gangs to work with in Harlem, and the best thing I remember is somebody stole four of my hubcaps, and I said to the gang, "How could you let your leader, your government leader, have his car robbed? I mean that reflects on you," I said.
And they got me four hubcaps.
MR: Were they a matching set?
Dr. Rich: Absolutely. Beautiful new hubcaps. And besides that, we went in my car around Harlem with the guy in charge of war, and they'd say, "Stop here." So I'd stop there, they'd get out of the car, talk to some guys, come back. And we did this route, and they said, "Anywhere in this district, your car will not be touched."
And it wasn't. I parked wherever I wanted to park.
Asshole Buddies
MR: So back to the patient that you've seen for all these years-
Dr. Rich: Well she's no longer a patient, she's very healthy now.
MR: But how many years is that? That's 60 years, right?
Dr. Rich: Yeah. So, we're friends. We're simply friends. Her husband died recently. We were really asshole buddies.
MR: What does that phrase mean – I’ve never heard “asshole buddies” before.
Dr. Rich: Well, I know it very well.
MR: I've never heard that phrase.
Dr. Rich: Asshole buddies means very close. And this person now just got a stroke, I'll visit her in the hospital, because she's older than I am. And it was the only solid relationship that actually came after a treatment.
MR: Really?
Dr. Rich: Yeah, everybody has a fantasy about what happens after treatment, but most people don't want to know you after treatment.
MR: Because?
Dr. Rich: Because you embody all kinds of things for them.
MR: Something else to them.
Dr. Rich: Yeah, so it's something else to them. You work to lose the patient, you know, and there are very few people who would know who or what I am, which is fine. So this is the only person, in 63 years, where after the treatment – the treatment must have ended maybe in the late '80s, except for emergencies – after that, it was friendship.
MR: What is a good friend to you? What do you like in a friend?
Dr. Rich: Well the first thing is they've got to put up with me. That's the first problem. You know, whatever I am, when I'm not working, I'm really that, and can you live with that, whatever that is. And are you reliable? Are you a fair-weather friend or not? I don't like fair-weather friends. So, a friend to me means you've really got to be there if you're ever needed. And otherwise, we do like everybody else does. We have grill sessions, you know, I don't like big parties, I like small intimate dinners, and we talk about whatever comes up, whether it's education, whether it's something political, we talk about whatever comes up. I saw three bears cross my road this morning. You know, nothing special, really nothing special.
Manny’s Best Friend
MR: Are you friends with any of your colleagues?
Dr. Rich: About three of them.
MR: Do you have a best friend?
Dr. Rich: My dog was my best friend.
MR: Your old dog?
Dr. Rich: My dog just died two weeks ago. She was my best friend for 16 years. She never said a bad word, she never criticized, when I'm here she would always be here, laying, you know, as I did whatever I did. We'd walk together, she was always in the car. She's non-critical. She was non-critical.
MR: Do you have thoughts about getting another dog?
Dr. Rich: Oh absolutely.
MR: What kind of dog would you like to get?
Dr. Rich: I was going to go for a Great White Pyrenees, but the rescue groups found me wanting, and they wouldn't let me take a rescue. I said, "You're stupid.” Of course, then they really didn't want me to have a rescue dog. But it was a rescue group – I couldn't argue with them.
But I picked out a dog, and I said we'll take this dog, then they heard that I spent two and a half days in New York City, because I do spend two and a half days in New York City. And they said because I spend two and a half days in New York City, I can't have a Great White Pyrenees.
MR: How big are they?
Dr. Rich: They're the same size as a St. Bernard.
MR: What about the Pyrenees attracted you?
Dr. Rich: I've had two Kuvaszes, a Hovawart, a Pointer, and a Setter, and four dogs are buried right here. I have a cemetery plot for my dogs on my property. I like a large dog. They're all large. So, a Kuvasz is 90 pounds, you know, not a small dog. A female Great White Pyrenees is maybe 110 pounds.
I like them because they remind me of what I need to be with me. Part of my imagery, self-image, a part of a projection of what I want my animal to be like. Independent, firm, warm, protective, all at the same time. So I won't take a dog that's strictly guard dog and not friendly. All the dogs I just mentioned, the Kuvaszes, the Hovawart, and the great white Pyrenees – are all of that. They're affectionate to the family, they're warm and close, they're really quite protective. And they tell you, "Watch out." They don't have to bark, they don't have to growl, they don't have to do anything. They just are.
MR: When did you get your first dog?
Dr. Rich: I think I got my first dog at 12.
MR: When did you get one when you were living on your own?
Dr. Rich: As soon as I got married. I got a dog before I got a kid.
MR: When did you first get married?
Dr. Rich: '58.
A Seeded Roll and Butter and Coffee
MR: What do you eat in the morning?
Dr. Rich: Well, from my old days I eat a roll and butter – a seeded roll and butter and coffee. Occasionally a hard-boiled egg with it. Occasionally a small yogurt – a 60 or 80 calorie yogurt. And that's what I eat in the morning.
MR: Why?
Dr. Rich: Because when I started work at 10 or 11, that's what I ate. What we ate in the morning when we went to work every day in the morning, because I worked Saturday and Sunday, and that was morning. That's what you got.
MR: And how many years have you been doing? So how many years have you been doing this?
Dr. Rich: Since I was 10 or 11.
MR: Wow.
Dr. Rich: Because I've been working since I was 10 or 11.
MR: And what was that first job?
Dr. Rich: I worked with my father. My father was an electrician, a plumber, a hardware man, and I learned all of that. The only reason I didn't go into the hardware business, which I know backwards and forwards, is that my father was rather a nasty, sadistic guy, and I didn't want any part of it.
MR: So that’s very physical.
Dr. Rich: Oh it's also very mental. You had to know screw sizes, diameters, you had to know a hell of a lot of technical stuff to be proficient. You really did.
Don't knock plumbers and electricians.
MR: Believe me I don't.
Dr. Rich: They know a lot.
MR: Yeah.
Dr. Rich: I can tell you the difference of any screw to this day.
MR: Really?
Dr. Rich: It's size, it's diameter, what it's for. And any nail. And any plumbing part. You don't know that stuff.
MR: No.
Dr. Rich: I can fix all my stuff.
MR: I just want to make sure I ask you about your exercise routine.
Dr. Rich: Yeah? What about it? It’s shvach.
MR: What's shvach?
Dr. Rich: Are you Jewish?
MR: Yeah.
Dr. Rich: You don't know shvach?
MR: No, what's shvach?
Dr. Rich: It's poor.
MR: Do you exercise today?
Dr. Rich: No, I limber up, I don't exercise. If I do exercise it's logging lumber, you know, it's getting the wood ready for the fires.
MR: Did you lift weights in your life?
Dr. Rich: I lifted my weights since I was 13 years of age.
MR: Until?
Dr. Rich: Well I still have weights here. Until a couple of years ago. I've always lifted weights.
MR: Do you walk a lot?
Dr. Rich: I can't walk because of my back. I've damaged my back from all my labor. I did a lot of hard, physical labor in my time, and I've ruined my back. So what I do is bicycle. I have a stationary bike in each home, and I get on the stationary bike. And I have dumbbells, and I do dumbbells.
MR: How long do you stay on the bike for?
Dr. Rich: About 45 minutes.
“April in Paris” in Margaretville
MR: Do you listen to music?
Dr. Rich: I listen to music, I read a book, I watch TV.
MR: What do you listen to when you work out?
Dr. Rich: Whatever's on. We have 8,000 CDs. So in 8,000 CDs, I just listen to whatever I pick up, put it in, and whatever it is, it is. Because I have a variety. I have Jewish music, I have Egyptian music, I have Lebanese music, I have pop, I have folk, I have classical, because I have all of it. I like all of it.
MR: What kind of saxophone music do you play?
Dr. Rich: '30s and '40s music.
MR: When you practice do you play along with the music?
Dr. Rich: No, I listen to myself playing. I listen for what it sounds like, how it sounds like, I listen for the spirit of it. I listen if I'm in the spirit of it, or if I'm just playing.
MR: What’s the last song you played on your saxophone?
Dr. Rich: “April in Paris.”
MR: Really?
Dr. Rich: Did you ask me?
MR: That's such a great tune.
Dr. Rich: Well, I like it.
MR: What made you want to play that song?
Dr. Rich: I don't know, I have three fake books, and I have paperclips on the songs I want to play in each book. I don't want to play all the songs. I just take a paperclip, flip it, and that's what I play.
MR: You didn't think about it beforehand?
Dr. Rich: No, I didn't think about it, but that was the last song.
An Interpretation of The Interpretation of Dreams
MR: Right. And then what's the last book you read?
Dr. Rich: What's the last book I read? I don't know the name of it, it was about emotional transference therapy by Kernberg.
MR: What’s the first biography that comes to your mind right now?
Dr. Rich: Admiral Nimitz. I've read a number of military people, a number of public figures.
MR: Someone who's never read any psychoanalysis before, and wants one book, what's the first one you’d recommend?
Dr. Rich: The first book is Freud. Or the first book is Plato because he started it all.
There is The Interpretation of Dreams that Freud wrote. But someone in the Greek family wrote it thousands of years ago in a book that is also called The Interpretation of Dreams. So if you read that book, you would see what they do with multiple gods, and how they think of what their dreams mean. Fascinating. I came across that book by accident.
I got to stop because I have somebody I have to see at 9:00. It's 9:00. Your interview is over.
MR: This is perfect.
Dr. Rich: Was it perfect? We didn't get into anything but that's the interview.
MR: What do you mean we didn't get into anything?
Dr. Rich: Well, we don't know anything yet. But that's okay.