Robert DeYoung, Ph.D.
20 Feb 2025 |
Dear MPI Community,
As many of you know, my husband, Dr. Robert De Young, passed away on January 16. I thought that many of you would like to read his obituary, which is copied below.
I would like to invite you to a memorial celebration of Robert’s life that will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 15, at the Graduate Hotel in Ann Arbor. The hotel is located at 615 East Huron Street; valet parking will be provided.
In order to have an idea of how many people will attend, could you please RSVP to me at frischer@umich.edu? This RSVP is not “binding” — you may change your mind about attending at any time and you may also may decide to attend at the last moment without letting me know. We are just wishing to get a rough estimate of how many people will be there.
Some of you may enjoy reading something that I wrote about Robert many years ago for another purpose and a tribute that his adult niece posted on Facebook, which are below after the obituary.
MPI was clearly a most important part of Robert’s development and his life, and I am so grateful to its members for their tremendous support of both of us. I would especially like to thank Barb Gamble and Gail Vanlangen, who have been vitally important to me emotionally and practically since Robert’s death, and Jean Lewis who has been, as always, helpful, efficient, and kind.
Dion Frischer, Ph.D.
Obituary
Dr. Robert Arthur De Young passed away on January 16, 2025, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, after a 6-year struggle with leiomyosarcoma. He was a respected, effective, and passionate clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst and an extraordinarily loving son, brother, uncle, cousin, husband, stepfather, and grandfather.
Robert was born in Detroit in 1957, and grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois. He was born with retinoblastoma and lost his eyesight completely at age 8. This condition did not stop him from leading an exceptionally rich, active, accomplished, and generous life. He was a competitive athlete (swimming, wrestling, track, Beep baseball, rowing) and an expert woodcarver.
He graduated from Augustana College and earned a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the VA Hospital in Ann Arbor, became a staff psychologist there, and then began his private practice of psychology. He became a graduate psychoanalyst after training at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute.
He served as chair of the Committee on Disabilities in Psychology of the American Psychological Association, co-chair of the Candidates Organization of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute (MPI), and a valued member of several MPI committees. He taught courses to medical residents and psychoanalytic candidates in such subjects as psychodynamic concepts; the psychoanalytic understanding of the immigrant experience; working with patients who are parents; and mortality, mourning, and literature.
Robert was also passionate about peace and social justice. He picketed at nuclear power plants in the 1980’s. In 1995 he completed an 8-month Interfaith Pilgrimage for Peace and Life organized by Buddhist monks to commemorate the end of World War II. This pilgrimage covered nearly 10,000 miles (over 3,000 of them on foot), and crossed through 18 countries, in which the participants were joined by local peace marchers. It began at Auschwitz and ended at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Before graduate school, he worked as a therapist at The Marjorie Kovler Center for the Treatment of Survivors of Torture.
Robert was predeceased by his father James Joseph DeYoung and his mother Alice (“Ginger”) Mae DeYoung (née Hale). He is survived by his wife, Dr. Dion Frischer; his stepdaughter Marissa (Joseph) and two grandchildren; his siblings Bill DeYoung (Barb McWilliams), Jane Bartesch, Virginia DeYoung, and Ellen Kramer; sister-in-law Patricia Frischer (Darwin Slindee); 14 nieces and nephews; 12 grandnephews and grandnieces; and many loving friends and grateful patients.
Robert donated his body to the Anatomical Donations Program at the University of Michigan to help medical students and medical research. A memorial celebration of his life will be held at a later date.
Donations in Robert’s memory can be made to:
National Leiomyosarcoma Foundation
Michigan Psychoanalytic Foundation
Reflections from a letter I wrote about Robert some years ago
I met Robert De Young in late 2003 when we both worked at an outpatient psychiatric clinic in Ann Arbor. We began dating shortly thereafter, drawn together by many shared interests, including psychoanalysis, music, and baseball, and were married in 2008. I had received my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1985 and have practiced psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy since then.
Robert is, first of all, what is traditionally called of “sterling character” (more colloquially, a “mensch”). I have found him to be unfailingly reliable, conscientious, honest, responsible, and very hard-working. Beyond that, he is flexible in his thinking and reflective about his reactions. One of the things that I like best about him is his patience in listening both to others and to himself and the thoughtful way in which he considers and refines his responses. He is not hesitant to acknowledge when he has been too hasty or just plain wrong and actually enjoys learning and correcting himself. He is not afraid to face hard truths about himself. This happens in our personal conversations and when he discusses issues of clinical theory and practice.
On the personal level, he feels a deep engagement with other people and enjoys hearing their stories, thoughts, and feelings. I was impressed from the beginning by how important his large family in Illinois and California was to him, how much he knew about their past and current lives (including, by memory, the birthdays of his 14 nieces and nephews, each of whom he calls on those days), and how much enjoyment he gets out of visiting them. Although the need for confidentiality limits discussion of our actual clinical work, he will often say musingly at the end of the day, “Patients are so interesting.”
Robert’s niece’s Facebook post
One of the most miraculous humans to ever walk this earth crossed over to the other side last night. How lucky was I to have you as not only my uncle but my godfather and my friend. Your comedic timing and ability to deliver the punch line of a joke at the perfect time was uncanny. The way you brought calmness to everyone else’s chaos is something I will be forever grateful for and miss dearly. As the family said yesterday, we hope you are up there in heaven and able to SEE grandma and grandpa and look down and SEE all of us here. Hope you are seeing all the beautiful colors of the world. I hope Nellie girl is giving you all of the slobbery kisses and still guiding you on this new journey. You were dealt an unfair hand, but you never let it stop you. Your perseverance is admirable. You have done more with your time than half of the rest of us can say we have. How many people can say their blind uncle let them bring him in for grade school show-and-tell and show off his ability to read and type in braille? Or how many people can say they are able to not only barefoot water ski but do it blindly? From wrestling to rowing and walking across the globe, you were unstoppable and simply miraculous. I’ll miss you down here but I know I’ll see you again and I know we all now have the best guardian angel looking out for us. We love you, Uncle Robert.
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