Lessons for Life: Ron Auerbacher, Austen Riggs Former Patient 1965-1967

“Dark and depressing,” said Ron Auerbacher as he recalled the day in January 1965 when he first arrived at the Austen Riggs Center. The depths of the New England winter weather outside matched his internal feelings. “I was really scared. I was really depressed.”

Ron was 18 when he came to Riggs, and he had been plagued for years with anxiety and depression. Additionally, he struggled to understand his emerging identity as a gay man—which society at that time regarded as an aberration and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

“I thought there was something horribly wrong with me, producing years of shame, self-loathing and comparison to others,” he said.

Though it would take time to realize, Ron’s experience with the Center’s therapeutic community-based treatment and his involvement with Riggs’ theatre program would give him a foundation to navigate the challenges that lay ahead in the ensuing decades of his life.

Ron was born in 1946 to parents, now-deceased, of German-Jewish heritage in St. Louis. His mother’s family immigrated to the United States in the 1800s. His father and his family fled Germany at the outset of WWII in 1939.

He reflected upon his relationship with his father (whom Ron described as a “rageaholic”) as neither close nor warm, “Probably due to post-traumatic stress from being a teenager in 1930s Nazi Germany.” He said his mother, who attended Stanford, was secular and progressive by nature, but burdened by mid-20th century mother and housewife expectations and her own severe Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) health challenges.

This upbringing left a mark. “I can remember, in middle school, I was extremely depressed,” Ron said. “By the 12th grade, I had some vague feeling that there was something severely wrong with me.”

As a teen, immersing himself in writers such as Gore Vidal and James Baldwin and singers such as Bob Dylan, gave Ron social and political perspective beyond what he was taught in school.

Ron entered Yale in the fall of 1964 but immediately felt consumed by multiple conflicts. The abundance of wealth at Yale contrasted starkly with the poverty in surrounding Black areas of New Haven; his growing awareness that he was attracted to men was amplified by the discomfort of sharing a room with another man; and he found no value in the Greek classics he was assigned. He became obsessed with finding meaning amidst so many contradictions.

With exams approaching, Ron lost his will to study, his focus, and his direction. “I could barely function, and called my parents.” His father told Ron to see a rabbi, who recommended that Ron consult a psychiatrist. “I think they were worried that I would kill myself.”

After two or three conversations with the psychiatrist, Ron was put in a police car and driven to a locked facility. He was administered medications that resulted in severe shaking, agitation, and significant weight gain. Clearly the treatment was not working.

Riggs and Yale mental health professionals have had a long association with one another and through this network, Ron made his way to Stockbridge.

At first, he found the Riggs experience alien. As an introvert, it was difficult for him to relate to the other patients. “I remember people telling me they found me very cold, aloof, and distant,” he said.

Therapy also presented challenges. One of the hallmarks of the Center’s psychoanalytic therapy sessions—then and now—is for the patient to play an active role and lead the discussion with their clinician. At times, this can create long pauses while waiting for thoughts and feelings to emerge. Ron’s shame about his sexuality created 20-minute pauses.

That said, the one-on-one sessions offered something novel to Ron: “I had never had anyone to talk to privately in my whole life.”

Exploring the Riggs community through group work that focused on the relationship between individuals and others, in conjunction with his interest in the performing arts program, yielded a richer experience, Ron recalled.

Marshall Edelson, MD, who was on the Riggs clinical staff during Ron’s time at the Center, was a key proponent of the therapeutic community, another one of the central facets of Riggs’ treatment approach. In the Therapeutic Community Program, patients learn how other people see them and how one person’s actions relate to other individuals and the group as a whole. 

“We learned that if someone were to act out or cut their wrists, that has an impact on everybody who's living together,” said Ron as he looked back upon what he took from this social learning which Riggs now calls “examined living.” “There was definitely something stimulating—and unusual from my previous experience—regarding what Edelson was getting at about creating community,” he added.

Years later, he realized that some other Riggs patients shared his feelings about same-sex orientation. He never spoke with other patients about it at the time, but it proved helpful to finally understand that he was not alone. In 1973, the APA took its first steps to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder.

Discovering the theatre program made an even more profound impression on Ron. Riggs’ performing arts program, in which patients produced plays for the public, built on his life-long interest in the theatre. That passion was further fueled by the program’s director, Jayne Mooney Brookes.

“Although Jayne had no formal theater training, she had an intuitive genius not only for directing, but for working with people and seeing them as creative artists, not as mental patients,” Ron said. The selection of plays Riggs put on included Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” and A Thousand Clowns. “At that time, A Thousand Clowns seemed extremely attractive, rebellious, and articulate, given that it was about a guy who couldn’t fit into normal society.”

Ron dove right into the program. “The Theatre Group at Riggs offered so much," Ron said. "It allowed patients to express deep emotion that in other circumstances would have been considered ‘acting out;’ it gave us a sense of self-worth and a different identity than ‘helpless and hopeless;’ and it enabled us to learn to work cooperatively for a collective goal,” he added.

Through his involvement, he became Jayne’s assistant director and she his mentor. “For the first time in my life, I had the exhilarating experience of having someone who really encouraged my talent, loved me, and cared about me.”

In the fall of 1967, Ron was discharged from Riggs and went to New York City, where he encountered both obstacles and opportunities. He pursued his love for the performing arts by enrolling in theatre studies at New York University but found the system competitive and cut-throat compared with the supportive, convivial, and collaborative experience in the Riggs theatre program. He joined the New York City Gay Liberation Front (GLF), the activist political organization which formed after the Stonewall riots in 1969, motivated both by his emerging acceptance of being gay as well as the sense of community that the movement represented.

His trajectory would lead from New York City to Cuba, San Francisco, India, rural Oregon, and finally to San Diego, where he has lived since the mid-1980s. This physical journey went hand-in-hand with experimenting with a variety of ways to expand his ability to engage with others and learn about himself. Those insights stemmed from the informal learning that came from living in various communal settings to his formal studies of Non-Violent Communication and Zen Buddhism, both of which feature the same kinds of mindfulness and self-reflection that is often critical in the patient-therapist relationship at Riggs. Through these experiences, he was able to come to terms with and effectively manage the anxiety and depression that plagued his youth. 

His personal and intellectual pursuits were accompanied by a diverse career in which he has been a Holistic Health practitioner, Non-Violent Communication instructor, and lecturer/ performer of Shakespeare for middle- and high-school kids. His work with students continues in his retirement, including mentoring, reading aloud young adult books with themes of social justice, and participating in a San Diego Unified speakers bureau in which he shares with students his experiences of the 1960s. He said his goal is not so much to relate historical tales from the past, but rather “to inspire them to know that they can make a difference.”

Asked what advice he would have for others facing mental health issues, Ron offered this: regardless of the modality of treatment you choose—psychoanalytic, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, or other—“it makes a huge difference to know that the person you’re working with really, genuinely cares about you. That was certainly true at Riggs!”

If you are a former Riggs patient who benefitted from treatment at the Center and would like to share that experience with others, please contact John Zollinger, Director of Communications, at: john.zollinger@austenriggs.net or 413.931.5816. Alternatively, you can fill out this form.