Maida Jablon Greenberg, beloved mother, adored grandmother, dear aunt, cherished sister, esteemed psychoanalyst, trusted friend, and treasured colleague, died on September 4, 2024 at age 88, less than six months after the loss of her husband of nearly 60 years, Robert Greenberg. She previously served as director of the Parent-Child Center of New England and had a private practice in Cambridge and Newton, Massachusetts. Maida was a passionate, committed, and insightful therapist who cared deeply for her patients, some of whom she worked with over decades. She was respected as a child and adult analyst and a supervisor at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and wrote and presented on issues including twins, adoption, family dynamics, transitions, and trauma.
Born in 1936 to Ethel and Pincus (Phil) Jablon, Maida was the third child, a loving daughter with a rebellious streak that led her to embrace feminist ideals and pursue her own career. Her father left Poland for America at age fourteen, reputedly funding his trip with pennies stolen from the family cash register. Phil helped his brother and sister emigrate and avoid the fate of much of the rest of the family, who perished in the Holocaust. In Philadelphia, Phil, starting out as a pushcart peddler, built a fruit-and-produce wholesaling business, P. Jablon & Co., where Ethel worked as a bookkeeper. His success enabled Maida and her beloved brothers, Alan and Norman, to escape the privations of the Depression, to drink fresh orange juice for breakfast every morning, and to live in a comfortable row house in the city where neighborhood kids gathered in the basement to dance the Charleston, play poker, and hone their ping-pong skills under Ethel’s benevolent, watchful eye. In high school, Maida was smart and sociable, becoming editor of the newspaper and chair of many committees; after school she enjoyed the intellectually curious atmosphere of Gratz Hebrew College. While her parents wished for her to get married to a nice Jewish boy from the community, Maida wasn’t quite ready for that.
After a semester at Penn, which she decided was too close to home for her to spread her wings, Maida enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, an educationally progressive and intellectually heady environment, majoring in history and literature and graduating in 1958. She moved to Chicago, where she completed a master’s degree in psychology at the University of Chicago and worked with special-needs children at The Orthogenic School, under the direction of Bruno Bettelheim. In Chicago, at a Hannah Arendt lecture, she met Bob Greenberg, to whom she became engaged after a six-week courtship.
When Bob was hired at Brandeis University, they moved to Boston, where Maida gave birth to three children in twenty-two months. As a young mother, she then returned to her studies and completed a doctorate in education at Boston University, writing her dissertation on the psychology of twins. Even that achievement was just a stepping stone, as Maida continued to study, attaining her state licensure, and her certification as a psychoanalyst and a child analyst. She never fully acknowledged her considerable intellectual gifts, but others were impressed by her keen mind, intense curiosity, and uncommon emotional sensitivity.
She never lost her sense of play. She would sit on the floor to play games and make-believe with the children she counseled, as she would later happily do with her six grandchildren. The compassion, curiosity, and warmth that rendered Maida a skilled and successful therapist also made her the emotional center of her proud, loving family. She remained deeply attached to dozens of members of the extended Jablon, Friefelder, and Lerner clans, keeping up busy phone and email exchanges with her brothers, nieces, nephews, and cousins, all in her uniquely free-associative style.
She had boundless love for Bob, her soulmate. For decades they were partners in raising a family, traveling the world, talking politics, enjoying art and culture, hosting family occasions, and spreading warmth across a sprawling mishpacha. As a mother, she had bottomless reserves of patience and compassion. She was a good listener who always made her children feel secure, confident, and loved. Despite pursuing a high-powered career, she never missed a school conference or important occasion in any child’s life. Even her children’s misbehavior was less a source of aggravation to her than an occasion to understand them better. She remained endlessly interested in the lives of her three children, Judith, David, and Jon, and later in those of her children-in-law Ira, Suzanne, and Megan, and always supportive of all their interests, activities, and achievements. She built intimate, independent, tightly bonded relationships with each of her six grandchildren, Claire, Hank, Sasha, Maggie, Leo, and Liza, never forgetting a birthday or graduation and showering everyone with gifts and chocolate for virtually any occasion.
Maida and Bob’s home at 48 Ballard Street in Newton, MA was a gathering place for decades of family Thanksgivings, Seders, and other holidays, and a welcoming refuge for friends, neighbors and colleagues. The main frustration each year was getting Maida to actually sit down to the meal rather than fussing over her guests. Her kitchen was the hearth, festooned with family photographs from every stage of life, lined with every appliance on the market from the 1970s onward, packed with cookbooks used to craft shared meals, and never lacking a copy of the New York Times to spark conversation. Maida kept dozens of lifelong friends who valued long conversations, walks, and reveling in the latest news of their respective families. When Bob faced health problems in his final years, Maida was his tireless caregiver, holding his hand every night as he lay in bed, and mourning him profoundly after his death. Maida and her kids had hoped that she might then enjoy an exciting final chapter of life on her own in New York City, closer to the children, engaged with a new psychoanalytic community, and immersed in the city’s cultural life. After all her dedication to others, she richly deserved that victory lap. But amid her grief came a cruel illness that stole her remaining time, depriving her and her family of a golden years they had yearned to enjoy together. She will be missed immeasurably.
