DEL NORD

NORD, Del Psychotherapist, Egyptologist, 101 At the age of fifteen, Del borrowed from a local lending bookstore and read two volumes by Sigmund Freud, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sexuality and Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious. She discovered there was an explanation for the unhappiness she had experienced at home. Del felt she had a friend in faraway Vienna. As a freshman at the University of Chicago, citadel of freewill, she enrolled for a psychology course. The introduction to the textbook read: "we owe a great deal to Sigmund Freud, but . . ." She dropped the course poste-haste. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1942 with a BA, she received an MA in Pyschiatric Social Work from Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1945. Then she worked for a number of years as a therapist at the Bobs Robert Child Guidance Clinic at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Del heard at a cocktail party that the Psychoanalytic Institute of Chicago was opening its doors for training to non-medical therapists, the first institute in America to do so, with the support of Anna Freud (Sigmund Freud's daughter) in London. She burst into tears of gratitude. She applied and was accepted in the Psychoanalysis Child Care Course. She graduated with a certificate in 1952. In her subsequent work with patients, Del saw that while the role of unconscious hostility was paramount in the causation of symptoms in many instances, knowledge of this was not sufficient for a cure. The patients also needed to learn "what to do" in their dealings with other people, and given a long period to arrive at that knowledge. Her approach in later years thus proved to be a combination of interpretation of unconscious forces, their repetition in the transference or the way the patient reacts to the therapist, and equally important that the patient needs to be told how to handle life. In 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings held by the United States Subcommittee on Investigations were broadcast on national television. With one television in the family, Del's four-year old son, Philip, was unable to watch Howdy-Doody. Del had observed how the various congressman, Democrat and Republican alike on the committee, were terrified by McCarthy, master of bullying and intimidation and his lawyer, Roy Cohen, both of whom smeared one and all as being Communist. Frustrated by the proceedings, Del telephoned the office of Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri in Washington, since he was one the few congressmen who in any way confronted or disagreed with McCarthy. When she reached his office, she asked the secretary to speak with Senator Symington's private secretary. Since the latter was not available, she was asked if she would instead speak with his administrative assistant, Stanley Fike. Del timidly acquired whether the administrative assistant was in a close contact with the Senator as the private secretary was likely to be. After a stunned silence, she received a quiet "Yes." Stanley Fike then got on the phone. After she identified herself as a psychotherapist, he said "Isn't Joseph Welsh (a lawyer from Hale and Dorr in Boston) doing a good job?" Del said "Yes," but I live in Chicago, a hotbed of Republican reactionary politics, and more must be done! She then said she had some ideas about how the Democrats on the committee should handle Senator McCarthy. "Would he like to hear them?" "Go ahead", he said. Del told him that, first of all, McCarthy should be interpreted and the meaning behind his threats should be exposed. For example, Senator Symington should tell him: "Senator McCarthy, just because one doesn't agree with you doesn't make one a communist." Another interpretation she suggested was a more pointed response to an attack McCarthy was making on the Republic Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens, who had consulted a Democratic lawyer Clark Clifford for advice about handing McCarthy. In other words, McCarthy implied that Stevens had betrayed the Republicans by doing so. Del suggested that Symington reply that "There was nothing wrong with a Republican," Secretary Stevens, consulting a Democrat, since his own chief counsel Roy Cohn was a Democrat from New York who was advising McCarthy, a Republican Senator from Wisconsin. Mr. Fyke thanked her for her interest and that was the end of the conversation. After a recess, the committee reconvened. Each congressman has a few minutes to speak extemporaneously. When it was Symington's turn, he looked at the ceiling and said "Senator McCarthy, just because one doesn't agree with you, doesn't make one a communist!" After a recess, it was Symington's turn again. He looked at the camera and talked about that Chicago triple play --- from Tinkers, to Evers, to Chance. He then said "There was nothing wrong with a Republican, Secretary Stevens, consulting a Democrat, since McCarthy's own chief counsel. Roy Cohn, was an avowed Democrat from New York advising McCarthy, a Republican Senator from Wisconsin." McCarthy laughed, tipped his hat, and dropped the whole issue. The reference, by the way, was to a double play completed by Chicago Cubs shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance. About a month later, Del received a form letter from Senator Symington's office thanking her for her interest. A little after that, she wrote Mr. Fyke and asked him that if the reference to the Chicago triple play pertained to their conversation and would he please tell the Senator she "got it". In 1962, Del's best friend, Miriam Kopf, saw an advertisement in a British periodical for a Swan's Tour to Egypt. Del said: "Let's go!" Del's husband and their kids, Steve and Philip, saw their mother off. In front of them in line at the ticket counter at O'Hare Airport was a stately man who turned around and asked Philip, who was carrying the book in a net bag entitled "The Burden of Egypt." "Are you reading that book little boy?" Philip said "No, my Mommy is." The man opened his bill fold and handed Del his business card. It was the author of the book, John A. Wilson, Director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, one of the preeminent establishments for the study of Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East in the world. Dr. Wilson was on his way to Egypt as the American representative to the "Save the Monuments Campaign" which ultimately rescued Abu Simbel, the great temple of Ramses II from the rising waters of the Nile behind the Aswan dam. Del and Dr. Wilson had dinner together while waiting for weather conditions to clear up further east. Del had only read 10 pages on Ancient Egypt in the Encyclopeadia Britanicca. But she did her best and asked "How is Tell el-Amarna?" "The sand has blown in" replied Dr. Wilson. Then she said that she didn't think the Egyptian were morbib. They painted scenes of life on the walls of their tombs, so that life in this world might continue in the afterlife. This was a theme that Dr. Wilson had written about. The Swan's tour gave the usual hour and a half to the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and highlighting the treasures of Tutankhamen. Having had a glance at its other treasures, Del decided to stay on at the museum rather than going with the other tour members to the local bazaar, the Khan Khalili. There was some resistance initially but she stayed on at the museum. Skipping lunch, she gazed open-mouthed at the lifelike portraits of Rahotep and Nofret from the Old Kingdom, Egypt's Pyramid age and at the famous soldiers from Asyut of Middle Kingdom date, finding it hard to believe the painted wooden soldiers were not modern models but actually from the Middle Kingdom. The androgynous statues of the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten from the Eighteenth Dynasty, further attracted her attention as did the satiric ostraca of New Kingdom date. Ruminating on the experience at home in Chicago, Del sat in on a course taught by Prof. One day meeting Dr. Wilson on the steps of the Oriental she asked him if he thought she could do Egyptology "for real." He said "Apply!"At an entrance interview, Dr. Wilson asked Del why she wanted to become an Egyptologist. She answered "because she wanted to be like Margaret Murray and live to be a hundred." The latter had written a book entitles My first hundred years. In 1964, she found herself registering for a Ph.D. program in Egyptology. An "all but" in Egyptology, she nonetheless contributed a number of articles to professional journals and books. In two of these, as she liked to say, she "took the sex out of Egyptology," meaning the attitudes of early Egyptologists who imagined ancient Egypt to be like the Ottoman Empire, concluding that Egyptian women were esconced in harems. In the two articles she showed that two female titles commonly translated as "harim" or "royal concubine" were not such, but actually meant "musical entertainers" and "court lady" in their turn. It was at the Oriental Institute that Del met her husband to be, Edward Brovarski, later Curator of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A twenty-two year age difference did not deter their affection, and they spent a happy 55 years together. Del is survived by her husband; two sons, Stephen Nord of Pleasanton, California and Philip Nord, of Princeton, NJ; by two daughters-in-law, Dana Drew Nord and Deborah Epstein Nord; and by five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. A Funeral Service will be held on Wednesday, March 22nd in the Forsyth Chapel at Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Ave., Boston at 10:00 AM. Interment will follow.