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In Memoriam: Marjorie Toomim
One of the privileges of
working in the early development of a field is that most of the
pioneers are still around, and we get to know them all personally.
We have lost Neil Miller, Chuck Stroebel, and Barbara Brown, and
now Marjorie Toomim, but most of the people from the early days
of the field are still with us.
I attended a lecture by Marjorie some
years ago at a Biofeedback Society of California Conference in
which she described some of her most difficult cases. At the end
I asked her if she would rank these cases in her mind in the order
of the clinical challenge that they represented to her, and whether
she would be more or less likely to use biofeedback at the more
difficult end of that distribution. She answered at once that
the more severe the challenge, the more she would rely on her
skills as a psychotherapist. In fact, when she did use biofeedback
techniques, she would often use them simply as information for
herself rather than as information for the patient. “I was never
so humbled in my work as when my instrumentation told me that
I was wrong.”
So Marjorie was most at home as a psychotherapist,
and although her reputation spread far and wide here in Southern
California, she always remained humble. One attendee at her Memorial
Service told me privately of her original encounter with Marjorie.
She was in Hawaii at the time and had the sudden, strong sense
of needing to visit with Marjorie as a client. She did not at
that time have a clue what was driving all of this, but she bought
a plane ticket and showed up at Marjorie’s door in Santa Monica.
With the formalities of acquaintance barely past, she dissolved
in Marjorie’s presence into a gusher of trauma relating to her
early childhood history, something of which she was previously
unaware at a conscious level. She speaks of having been taken
in by the Toomims until her recovery was well launched, and she
is now a mental health therapist in her own right.
It is not possible to tell the story of
Marjorie Toomim without also telling the story of Hershel. With
Marjorie’s primary identification as a psychotherapist, Hershel’s
primary identification was that of an engineer. Their focus remained
somewhat different throughout. For example, I believe that during
her period of illness over the last few years, Marjorie never
availed herself of the HEG instrument that Hershel had developed.
Our own points of contact with Marjorie
and Hershel deserve mention, if for no other reason than to point
out the varied and diffuse influences that they have had on so
many people now active in the field. Sue took the Toomims’ biofeedback
training course early on, on a path to biofeedback certification.
EEG biofeedback played a very minor role in that training course,
even though Hershel had developed one of the early alpha trainers.
When it came time for Sue to take the
BCIA certification exam, candidates were told to show up with
their instrumentation at the appointed hour for their practicum
examination. Sue did not have “her” instrumentation, or indeed
any instrumentation for peripheral biofeedback. She had become
acquainted with the J&J suite, so she approached Steve Stern
at his booth for help. Could she borrow his demonstrator unit
for a brief time? That turned out to be a non-starter. So Sue
approached Hershel. He offered his Biocomp system right off the
exhibit booth, and also taught Sue how to use it on the spot.
A few minutes later, she walked into the exam and passed.
Years later, when we were in legal tangle
with Margaret Ayers fighting for our place within this field,
we again approached Hershel about whether he might be willing
to testify on the issue of the claimed uniqueness of what Ayers
was offering. Hershel had nothing to gain from this, and a lot
to lose, but he did agree to testify. I am convinced that his
perspective as an independent authority on a variety of arcane
issues helped the arbitrators to their decision in our favor.
Some time thereafter Hershel and Marjorie
bought one of our NeuroCybernetics instruments for their biofeedback
operation on Robertson Blvd. Marjorie did not actually spend much
time there because of her own environmental sensitivities or,
if you like, toxic building syndrome. Several of their biofeedback
clinicians got trained, and started using the system. (One of
them was Victoria Ibric.) The instrument was starting to attract
attention in the office, which kindled Hershel’s competitive instincts.
At the time he was engaged in the development of a myographic
instrument that could be used to discern whether patients had
back-pain with muscle involvement or whether they were perhaps
merely malingering.
Hershel was convinced that our instrument
was nothing more than a very expensive way of inducing activation
and blood flow, and ultimately more capillary formation, in the
brain. Surely this could be done more straight-forwardly with
a direct measurement of blood oxygenation, which he then proceeded
to prove through plethysmography. At that point there was another
stroke of good luck. Hershel had told quite a number of people
of his interest. One of them was Julie Weiner. And as it happens
she got a visit one day from some fellows with the Physics Department
at NYU. They had developed a plethysmographic unit for probing
cortical function and were casting about for an application. Hence
their visit to the biofeedback practitioner over in the Psychology
Department. As soon as she laid eyes on the unit she knew just
who would be interested: Hershel Toomim.
The above are my recollections from various
conversations, and undoubtedly the details need refining. In broad
brush, the above shows the strange way in which progress in this
field is sometimes made, and more importantly, the huge impact
that Hershel and Marjorie have had on the field of biofeedback
over time through their courses, their instrumentation developments,
and through their ever-probing minds. They both approached this
discipline very differently. Their complementary perspectives
continue to be needed.
Author: Dr. Siegfried Othmer
At the Memorial Service, and again at
the Winter Brain Conference, Hershel shared with everyone the
poem that he had written for Marjorie:
Marjorie’s Requiem
The love of my life has died.
That Marjorie is gone is my burden.
Sharing it with you helps.
I have yet to drain the sad cup,
Shed all the tears that keep welling
up.
It’s a great sadness.
Marjorie was the light of my life.
Through her I learned to love.
We had the best of everything
Through our time together.
Marge was life’s strong solid rock.
I was the anchor in her life.
I have a great sadness.
I have shared in my life
The most beautiful satisfying love
Ever granted to man.
Still that doesn’t change the growing
sadness.
I know not where it will go.
It seems to grow with every note
of condolence I am receiving.
I can’t talk about it without tears
that well up from nowhere.
Any other subject is crisp and redolent
of my past feelings and way of being,
Far more pleasant but somehow non-rewarding.
All that is in my mind now is
Bon Voyage, Marjorie my love.
-Hershel
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