Peter G. Kotcher

Peter Kotcher was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1946 the second son of Emil Kotcher and Jeanne Giles Kotcher When Peter was about 5 the family moved to Vietnam where Emil, a microbiologist, worked to establish blood banks for the U.S. government. Peter found the trip to be wonderfully interesting and exciting; this trip engendered a life long love, of travel. Vietnam was still under French domination and Peter attended a French language school, The Ecole de Gaul. He quickly learned to speak French and advanced rapidly academically. He found the Vietnamese people to be kind, friendly, and protective of his safety. Upon return to the U.S. Emil Kotcher took an academic position at the University of Louisville and the family lived in Charlestown, Indiana. After attending elementary school and high school in Charlestown, Peter began to commute with his father to a high school in Louisville. He had found a copy of some of the writings of Sigmund Freud in his father's library and having read them, found them fascinating and decided he wanted to be a psychoanalyst. His trip to Louisville required him to arrive before the beginning of his classroom time and he spent the early hours in the medical school library reading what he could find about psychoanalysis. After graduating from Waggener High School, he entered Rice University from which he graduated as a chemistry major. He then entered the doctoral program in Chemistry at Johns Hopkins (his father's alma mater) where he earned an M.A. in Chemistry. At this point he had to deal with the Selective Service process. By temperament and ethical conviction, he felt he could not serve in a combat role in the military. Because he had lived in Vietnam as a child, he loved the country and the people and knew he could not serve there. He investigated the process by which he could qualify for Conscientious Objector status and successfully presented his case to his then local draft board. He was able to perform alternative service as a psychological technician at the Shepherd-Pratt psychiatric hospital in Maryland. This allowed him to explore further his interest in psychoanalysis and gave him invaluable experience working with severely mentally ill individuals. With a view toward pursuing psychoanalytic training, he obtained an MD degree from the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport, Louisiana and completed his psychiatry residency at the former Cincinnati General Hospital in 1979 where he also served as Chief Resident. He then entered psychoanalytic training at the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute from which he graduated. He worked at the Cincinnati VA Medical Center retiring after serving for over a decade as Chief of the Mental Health Care Line. Peter felt a deep and complex compassion for the veterans of the Vietnam War. He saw how their lives had been wrecked by being dragged into that terrible pointless war and who were then vilified by some anti-war protesters upon their return home. Most recently he had served as Director of the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute which allowed him to advance and foster the power of psychoanalysis which he had discovered so early in his life. He is survived by his sons Ivan, Ben(Mia), and John (Karin Jue). his granddaughter Akiko Jade Kotcher, his sister Betty Kotcher and his wife Dr. Marlene Kocan. If they wish, friends may contribute to Doctors Without Borders in his memory; https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org/.