Dr. Carl Adatto, 89, psychiatrist, teacher Submitted by N.O.V.A. January 2007 Times Picayune November 30, 2006 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Dr. Carl Adatto, a psychiatrist, educator and faculty member at Louisiana State University medical school for many years, died at his home in New Orleans on Nov. 22, his family said. He was 89. Dr. Adatto practiced general psychiatry for decades while teaching at LSU, and until recently continued to see a few patients at his home-office near Audubon Park, said his son, Kenneth Adatto. Dr. Adatto also was a well-known psychoanalyst, working for many years in a sub-specialty of psychiatry that uses Freudian analysis to probe the problems of patients. He trained other psychoanalysts through the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute, where he held emeritus status as a training and supervisory analyst. He taught at LSU medical school from the 1950s to the 1980s and served for a time on its admissions committee. Two professorships in psychiatry are named in his honor at LSU medical school, said Dr. Howard Osofsky, chairman of the psychiatry department. Dr. Adatto also was on the staff of Touro Infirmary. Dr. Adatto authored more than 30 papers during his career, said his family, including "On Play and the Psychopathology of Golf," which proposed that golf and other adult play, no less than children's games, have unconscious meanings that may be helpful in a patient's problems. Although he worked in a field of conceptual abstractions like the unconscious, Dr. Adatto was notably common-sensical and grounded in his work, said a colleague, Dr. Sam McClugage, dean of admissions at the medical school. "He saved a lot of people's lives, I guarantee you," McClugage said. "He could take a serious situation and show a patient how to turn it around and get on with life." Dr. Adatto was born in Seattle and came to New Orleans to train as a surgeon at Charity Hospital early in World War II. Later, as a Navy doctor in the Pacific, he treated Marines coming off Iwo Jima for battle stress. The experience steered him toward a new career path in psychiatry, his son said. Dr. Adatto was founder and chairman of the New Orleans Psychiatric Institute, president of the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Society and served on the American Psychoanalytic Association Committee. He was an adviser to the juvenile courts in New Orleans and served on the board of the Holman Vocation Center, which provides educational and vocational training to mentally challenged children. Besides his son, Dr. Adatto is survived by his wife of 63 years, Adele Adatto; two daughters, Carol Nelson and Phyllis Smith, both of Houston; two sisters, Jennie Tarabulus of Seattle and Leah Kayem of Houston; and 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. A private graveside service was held Wednesday at Hebrew Rest Mausoleum. A memorial service will be held Jan. 14 at noon at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Tharp-Sontheimer-Tharp Funeral Home in Metairie was in charge of arrangements.