Felix Cohen, Psychiatrist Who Founded Cambridge Clinic, 86
DGH
Doctor Felix Cohen, who practiced psychiatry for 50 years, many of them
as director of out-patient services at state-supervised mental health
clinics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Westborough, Massachusetts, and
Framingham, Massachusetts, and who had lived in Newton, Massachusetts,
for 50 years, died Monday, December 5, 2005, at Brigham and Women's
Hospital of pneumonia following a 20-year struggle with Parkinson's
disease, at the age of 86.
Felix Cohen might have concentrated on the more lucrative private
practice of psychiatry, but he chose to work in the public sector at
state and Veterans Administration hospitals. He always put the care of
his patients over his own interests, his family said.
When his physician son found that Dr. Cohen was "substantially
undercharging" his private patients and brought it to his attention, he
responded in a typical way: "My patients have a difficult enough time
coping with life as it is; I can't add to their burden," his son,
Richard of Newton, said yesterday.
"Dad was a very independent thinker," Richard Cohen said. "He was an
individual very dedicated to his family, his community, and his
patients. He developed his own approach to psychotherapy. Instead of
focusing on the psychological history of his patients, he tried to get
them to focus on their goals and achieving those goals. He gave it a
name -- 'Goal Specified Therapy' and wrote some articles about it."
Dr. Cohen "would deal with people as he found them," said his son Eliot
of Silver Spring, Maryland.
"He worked with the value system someone was coming in with," said
Eliot. "He thought it was very important for people to set goals for
themselves that were achievable and not dwell too much on the past. A
large part of what he did was to help people make step-by-step
decisions they needed to help them out of a hole."
Though he had private patients, most of Dr. Cohen's work was devoted to
the state's public health system, Richard said. He obtained a federal
grant to set up The Cambridge Day Center for mental health patients,
which was later taken over from the state by the city of Cambridge.
Even though he worked for lower pay in the state system, Richard said,
he managed to send his four sons to private school and to college.
Dr. Cohen was born in Malden, the son of immigrant parents, Samuel and
Gertrude (Deitsch) Cohen. His father was from White Russia and his
mother from Riga, Latvia. "My paternal grandfather was sort of a
Horatio Alger story," Eliot Cohen said. ''He started here without a
dollar and ended up owning a shoe factory in Auburn, Maine."
Because of his father's business, Dr. Cohen grew up in both Brookline
and Auburn. He graduated from Harvard College in 1940 and from the
University of Rochester Medical School in in 1944.
In his 25th Harvard reunion report, Dr. Cohen said that he spent a
year's internship at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago and two years
doing psychiatric work in the Army, mostly in Europe.
He married Frieda Omansky, an architect, in June 1947. In 1958, he
received a degree in public health from Harvard University.
Early in his career, his sons said, Dr. Cohen became interested in
exploring the relationship between religion and mental health. ''He
looked into how people coped with bereavement," Eliot Cohen said, ''and
he was struck by how sensible the Jewish bereavement practices are."
This revelation led Dr. Cohen to ''become an active member of the
Boston Jewish community," his family said.
In the 1950s he was part of a group that founded Beth El Atereth Israel
Synagogue and in the 1980s, Sha'arei Tefila Synagogue, both in Newton.
Dr. Cohen addressed the religious issue for his 1965 Harvard reunion.
"The religious dimension eluded me at college but has affected me since
settling down," he wrote. "In the past 10 years, the exploration and
utilization of Judaic ideals have proved a warming experience. This
remains a personal matter for me, however, rather than leading to a
major organizational involvement." He also wrote of "an agonizing
reappraisal of a classical psychoanalysis ... . Fundamental concepts
and approaches are in flux and the frontiers can be pushed back."
Outside of work, Dr. Cohen was a skier, skater, gardener, and
theater-goer. An avid tennis player, he once belonged to a group ''The
Early Birds" at a local tennis club.
In his 50th Harvard reunion report, Dr. Cohen wrote that he had retired
from clinical practice and "since limited myself to consulting at an
agency ... . At this time, psychiatry is characterized by many
conflicting currents of opinion. My own belief remains that the role of
mind-altering drugs is limited because they do not deal with the
fundamental factors involved."
>From 1971 until he retired at age 75, Richard said, his father worked
as consultant to the Department of Disability Services of the
Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission.
For his 55th Harvard reunion, he wrote: "My report for the 55th is
favorable. To be sure, I have abandoned tennis this year as too risky."
In addition to his wife and sons, Dr. Cohen leaves two other sons,
Stephen of Newton, Massachusetts, and David of Easton, Connecticut; 13
grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Boston Globe