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My Summer Therapy with Deak

February 8, 2021
I know this is much delayed, but I have only recently started thinking about what happened to Deak. I think I have a great story to add.

Back in the summer of 1974, I was in the middle of a program at the University of Oregon studying for a PhD in political science, financed by an NSF grant I was awarded by the department.

I had a very good friend with whom I was going to go on a driving-camping trip all over the country beginning in the middle of August, and we had more than some issues between us. He connected me with Deak, who was waiting for his PhD to be formalized, but who was still seeing students in a free practice.

Deak spent three weeks with me EVERY day for an hour or more each time, pushing me gently but firmly to sort out those issues and deal with them. (The only diversions from our discussions were the whooping sounds that his pet monkey occasionally made from his cage on the other side of the room!) 

Bottom line is that Deak was an immense help in assuring me that there was absolutely nothing weird or unusual about what I thought was toxically unusual about me. And, of course, he didn’t charge anything for that help. 

When my friend and I were driving out of Eugene to start our trip, we actually passed Deak in his car, with the pet monkey sitting alongside of him, leaving Eugene in the rear-view mirror.

He was a wonderful man who assisted me more than I can say. (I never finished my PhD, because I quit at the end of the third year of the program and went to law school instead.)

 I knew very little about his private life, of course, but was delighted to read about the “happy sides” of it on this memory site. Just sorry I missed out on some of his cooking!

Greg Bader, Eugene

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