Helen Mahut
My friendship with Helen is one I shall always cherish. Although tumultuous, our relationship had an enormous impact on me.
I met Helen through my brother-in-law, who lived in the same small apartment building as Helen. Formidable in her demeanor, she could embody righteous indignation like no one else I knew. Admittedly, I was a bit afraid of her, but I was also curious about her. I ended up moving into Helen’s building soon after meeting her, and our friendship began.
Helen was mercurial, to say the least; a woman of extremes, you never knew quite what to expect in encounters with her. Some days she was warm and funny and cheerful; other days, not. But that was just Helen. Helen was a passionate woman; she loved proper behavior, jazz, good cooking, her garden, literature, teaching, her students, and most of all, her work. She was a neurophysiologist, and worked with dedication and determination. She immersed herself in her research, committed to finding answers about the mysteries of the human brain. Helen enjoyed her work immensely, and wanted her students and her subjects (rats, then monkeys) to do the same. She would spend time in the lab literally playing with the animals, explaining “They need to have fun, too!” Helen honored me by taking me to her lab and into the monkey habitat, instructing me very carefully on how to behave so as to avoid upsetting the monkeys. She also took me to another part of her lab to learn how to mount brain tissue on microscope slides, not an activity I ever expected to engage in. She demonstrated, watched me make an attempt, and grinned, telling me to “Have fun!” as she exited the lab. It was a truly thrilling day.
Helen was very quiet about her personal life. I knew that she was from Poland, a Holocaust survivor, and had ended up in Canada after the war. I never asked her about her history, but she sensed my curiosity. After years of friendship, we were sitting at her kitchen table drinking coffee, as we often did. Out of the blue, she said “My name was Valentina.” I held my breath. “Do you want to hear about it?” Of course I did. And she proceeded to tell me her story over the course of time, often in snatches, sometimes in long narratives. When I urged her to have her story documented, she became very upset; she had given a formal interview about it once, and it was a very bad experience for her. She said “Never again!” But she did want to pass it on, and told me that I was the one with whom she wanted to share it. Helen wrote memoirs since our talks, but some of what she told me differs from what she wrote, and some things are omitted completely. I hope her story will be written someday, but what she shared in confidence shall remain her gift to me.
Hearing her story helped me untangle Helen’s very complicated mode of interaction. She was judgmental yet compassionate, serious and funny, demanding yet generous, unforgiving and loving, all rolled into one. She fascinated me from an objective viewpoint, and I wanted to understand her. When I asked her why she chose her particular career field, she told me “Because I have seen things I cannot explain, and I need to understand them.” She was referring to her war experiences, which included becoming an orphan and a widow by the age of 21, assuming a false identity, surviving the Warsaw uprising, participating in the resistance, constantly fearing for her life, nearly starving to death, enduring interrogations and having her body parts measured for ‘Jewish traits;’ the list goes on. But to her, the most horrifying memories were witnessing unspeakable acts committed by people against other people. These she could not understand, and it was to this end that she devoted her entire academic career. She was a pioneer in discovering the purpose of certain areas of the brain, and the implications regarding human behavior. Without Dr. Helen Mahut, modern medicine would have a very different view and understanding of memory, the human brain, and resultant human behavior.
And through her friendship, my life has been deeply enriched.
She was my professor for Psych at Northeastern University. She told some of us part of her story. She was a remarkable and inspirational woman.
As a Masters student in clinical psychology at McGill, I didn't have any lab contact with Helen. However, we often met on the elevator in the psychology building. She always was with a friendly dog. But, you had to be careful where you pet it as there were electrodes sticking out of its head. She treated her research subjects as kindly as if they were her children. We also looked up to her for her intellectual brilliance.
As a Masters student in clinical psychology at McGill, I didn't have any lab contact with Helen. However, we often met on the elevator in the psychology building. She always was with a friendly dog. But, you had to be careful where you pet it as there were electrodes sticking out of its head. She treated her research subjects as kindly as if they were her children. We also looked up to her for her intellectual brilliance.
In 1963, a second year graduate student in Harvard's Department of Social Relations (studying clinical psychology), my wife and I moved into an apartment at 14 Centre Street, Cambridge. Dr. Mahut at that time lived in the next door apartment building. She had her "McGill" dogs and was part of a most interesting group of dog-owners I've been involved with. We'd meet regularly, though it was never scheduled --- a philosopher from Brown with a beagle, a psychotherapist with a Golden, Dr Mahut and me with my white spitz+terrier. Our "walking" the dogs consisted of standing on the sidewalk as they played with each other and did what needed to be done. The conversations were always interesting -- sometimes about dogs, sometimes about science, sometimes about the death of Kennedy. She was always cordial yet reserved. It was many years before I learned about her contributions to science. I have very good memories of our times on the sidewalk that continued until '67 when I received my degree and moved on. I googled her name after seeing her death listed in the recent issue of the American Psychologist; I am happy to have stumbled onto this remembrance of her.
In 1963, a second year graduate student in Harvard's Department of Social Relations (studying clinical psychology), my wife and I moved into an apartment at 14 Centre Street, Cambridge. Dr. Mahut at that time lived in the next door apartment building. She had her "McGill" dogs and was part of a most interesting group of dog-owners I've been involved with. We'd meet regularly, though it was never scheduled --- a philosopher from Brown with a beagle, a psychotherapist with a Golden, Dr Mahut and me with my white spitz+terrier. Our "walking" the dogs consisted of standing on the sidewalk as they played with each other and did what needed to be done. The conversations were always interesting -- sometimes about dogs, sometimes about science, sometimes about the death of Kennedy. She was always cordial yet reserved. It was many years before I learned about her contributions to science. I have very good memories of our times on the sidewalk that continued until '67 when I received my degree and moved on. I googled her name after seeing her death listed in the recent issue of the American Psychologist; I am happy to have stumbled onto this remembrance of her.
Of course I never dared call her anything but Dr. Mahut. I studied with Prof. Martin Block in the neuro- sciences labs(her labs adjacent to his) at Northeastern 1974 and 1975. Dr. Mahut was unforgettable; one a moment a no-nonsense researcher that would command dutifulness(and dare I say fear) from those lucky to be working with her, and other times warm and charming with a playfulness that made her ageless. I ran into her often at the same small research department where I was working on my Seniors Honors Project with Dr. Block. She was a larger than life figure that surely frightened many students; yet, she was warm and befriending to myself and others that she chose to let see her other side. Although I had but one class with her, she was for me the most memorable person during my years at NU. Reading about her now, I feel a better understanding of why she was so different from my many other educators and why I can't get her out of my mind.
Of course I never dared call her anything but Dr. Mahut. I studied with Prof. Martin Block in the neuro- sciences labs(her labs adjacent to his) at Northeastern 1974 and 1975. Dr. Mahut was unforgettable; one a moment a no-nonsense researcher that would command dutifulness(and dare I say fear) from those lucky to be working with her, and other times warm and charming with a playfulness that made her ageless. I ran into her often at the same small research department where I was working on my Seniors Honors Project with Dr. Block. She was a larger than life figure that surely frightened many students; yet, she was warm and befriending to myself and others that she chose to let see her other side. Although I had but one class with her, she was for me the most memorable person during my years at NU. Reading about her now, I feel a better understanding of why she was so different from my many other educators and why I can't get her out of my mind.