Shakow, David

Basic Biographical Information

David Shakow was born on January 2, 1901 to Abraham Chaikowitz (aka Shakow) and Eva Leventhal, Russian immigrants who had recently settled on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (A. Shakow, personal communication, July 21, 2009). Although raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, as a teenager Shakow abandoned the traditional customs of Judaism. He attended the High School of Commerce in preparation for a business career, but his vocational interests would change, owing in part to his participation at Madison House, a settlement in NYC for new immigrants. It was there that he encountered the ideas of Freud and Jung. He would also soon encounter the works of William James, whom he considered his “lifelong hero,” and to whom he attributed his abiding interest in psychopathology (Cautin 2006).

Shakow wanted to study where James had taught, so after some effort to disentangle himself from the family business, he entered Harvard in 1921. There he benefited from...