Peter Zander Perault – 50th Reunion Essay

Peter Zander Perault

106 Stoneridge Drive

Chapel Hill, NC 27514

drpeterperault@gmail.com

919-490-5614

Spouse(s): Nancy (1976-)

Child(ren): Matthew (1980); Julia (1983)

Education: University of Vermont College of Medicine, 1977; Duke University, residency in adult and child psychiatry, 1982; Psychoanalytic Institute of the Carolinas, 2012

National Service: US Army Reserves, 1970–76

Career: Practice of psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, 1983–; President, North Carolina Psychoanalytic Society, 2010–14

Avocations: Biking, swimming, hiking, x-c skiing; photography; Jewish spirituality

College: Silliman

At Yale I never imagined I’d become a psychoanalyst.

I had survived a pretty devastating five years in my early teens—during which my father had died, my doting mother became a paralyzed quadriplegic after a car accident, then died a few years later when I was 16. At Andover I learned to carry on, with some silent fear that too much unmanly dwelling on it would paralyze me too. I sure didn’t want to think that I might be so shaken, bereft and lost that I needed someone, in loco parentis, to help me a lot more. And I didn’t imagine I could talk with someone understanding and safe enough to let me feel everything, say everything, grieve everything, clear my mind, know myself better—and make the most of Yale.

Trying to be that someone to talk to has turned out to be my life’s work.

I am especially grateful to Yale for accepting me back, two years after graduation, to take the pre-med courses I needed to go on to study and practice medicine, pediatrics, adult and child psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.

I still work four full days a week as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst talking with people about their lives, teaching and supervising younger psychotherapists. I feel very fortunate to have work that I love, and hope to continue as long as I can. I’d like to find the discipline to write about it more.

I was fortunate to be adopted into a wonderful family who happened to live next door, and to have some important therapeutic fathers along the way.

I was very lucky to find my wife Nancy, a psychotherapist and artist from a large and loving family, who has sustained me with enduring love for 41 years. Raising our two beloved children together—Matthew, a Facebook policy executive, soon to be married; and Julia, a psychotherapist at Columbia’s counseling center—has been the most important part of my life.

At an age to which neither of my parents survived, I bike and swim most days, and sometimes kayak, hike, and ski. Somehow my health has been just fine, so far.

I feel very fortunate. I feel very grateful.