Emotional rescue

For pioneering psychologist MarciaWeiner, feminism and therapy were inextricably linked

She shattered boundaries and existing beliefs in psychology. Specializing in the intersection between female sexuality and trauma, Marcia Weiner worked in territory considered ground-breaking at the time. She was an early adopter of such controversial methods as psychodynamic hypnosis and primal therapy, of which she was one of Toronto’s first practitioners.

Despite — or perhaps because of — her eclectic approach, Weiner’s work was well-respected by her peers, according to her granddaughter, Ariel Weiner.

Born Marcia Steinberger in New York City to Bernard Steinberger, a tax attorney and CPA, and the former Tillie Schoenholz, a homemaker, Weiner was the older sister of Roz and Cathy. The family lived in the borough of Queens, where Weiner attended Forest Hills High School. She was briefly married at 17, and Cathy Steinberger, 12 years her junior, remembers being the flower girl at her sister’s backyard wedding.

“She was my confidant, my advocate with our parents, my therapist who helped me get therapy to find myself in my late teens,” Steinberger says. “Then the age gap closed and we became trusted friends, sisters and peers for the rest of her life.” Weiner went on to earn a degree in speech therapy from Queens College, a Master’s in special ed from Columbia University and a PhD in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University.

She and her third husband, psychologist Herman (Hy) Weiner, moved from New York to Toronto in 1973, where they established, and she directed, the Primal Centre for Personal Development (in primal therapy, patients are encouraged to scream to release emotional pain). They were also founding members of the International Primal Association. At her private practice on Broadview Avenue, Weiner treated adults for dissociative identity disorder (formerly called multiple personality disorder) and posttraumatic stress disorder as well as those with histories of childhood sexual abuse, anxiety, depression, stress, eating disorders and sexual dysfunctions.

At a time when little was written about the sexual abuse at the root of her clients’ issues, Weiner became an authority, according to Ariel. “Marcia’s approach to treating survivors of sexual abuse was deeply informed by her feminist sensibility,” she says, “and she always sought to help patients recover or achieve some degree of body positivity and sexual empowerment.”

Weiner also held teaching posts, including a faculty position at York University’s Centre of Continuing Education, from 1975 to 1978, and she led first-of-their-kind workshops on women’s sexuality, body positivity and sexual identity with colleague Jean Rankin. She was also a specialist in the then-controversial therapy EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) in the 1990s.

Away from work, she nurtured a passion for music. After studying piano in her youth, Weiner returned to the instrument in her 50s under the tutelage of Peter Kristian Mose and participated in piano retreats in Massachusetts and the Czech Republic.

She had a particular interest in 19th-century female composers. “She felt she had found a calling,” Mose says, “to rescue their piano music from obscurity. It was as if she needed to speak for these semiforgotten women composers and bring their music alive again.” Always a hard worker, she spent a year preparing for her Toronto debut, a solo recital for her 75th birthday at the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, which Mose recalls was complete with formal invitations and catering. “Family, colleagues and friends from various stages of her life filled the hall,” he says. Weiner attended concerts with her friend the physician and abortionrights advocate Henry Morgentaler, with whom she shared a love of Baroque, Classical and Romanticera music.

Generous by nature, Weiner made monthly gifts to arts organizations, political groups and charities. Her stepson Eric Weiner says he “was struck with just how much money she donated to charitable causes — far more both in percentage of income and total amount than any other person I have ever known. I think this says a great deal about her essential character.”

David Weiner says of his close relationship with his “glamourous” mother, “She exposed me to art and culture and the love of music.” Her appetite for adventure led to her learning to sail in Toronto Harbour in the 1980s.

Weiner became a proud grandmother to Ariel, Sierra and Lincoln. “Marcia was an unconventional woman, and an unconventional grandmother as well,” says Ariel. “From her, I learned that it is possible for a woman to lead an uncompromising life.” Sierra Weiner calls her grandmother “a woman of great energy and fierce independence — and an absolute original.”

In the last 10 years of her life, Weiner struggled with health issues but, Ariel says, “managed to overcome these challenges and go on to pursue new adventures and continued working until the day of her death.” Friend and colleague Dvora Levinson says this was typical of Weiner: “Nothing would have induced her to give up her patients as long as she was able to work.”

“She cared deeply for people but didn’t care much about censoring herself for the benefit of others,” Sierra says. “A lifetime of Marcia’s influence has empowered me with the sensibility that taboos are not natural, but constructed, and that frankness is often our most powerful weapon against fear.”

Nothing would have induced her to give up her patients as long as she was able to work.

DVORA LEVINSON