Short abstract

Judianne Densen-Gerber was nothing if not controversial. To many, she was a successful innovator in drug rehabilitation, a woman with powerful friends and media clout who brought hope, funding, and rehabilitation to drug users who had been written off as “garbage.” To others she was a manipulative, dictatorial, mercurial woman who sometimes mixed up her accounts, taking public funds for her private use.​use.

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ORIGINAL PHOTO BY BRADFORD BACHRACH/www.historyforsale.com

Densen-Gerber was the daughter of an heiress and a chemical engineer. She first qualified as a lawyer, graduating from Columbia University Law School, before qualifying in medicine at New York University Medical School in 1963. She was doing a residency at psychiatry at Metropolitan Hospital in New York when, in 1966, she encountered her life's work in the form of 17 drug users.

“She was pregnant and female, and they gave her an easy assignment dealing with drug addicts. They told her they don't get well anyway,” said Ronald Brown, a former user who was rehabilitated through one of Densen-Gerber's programmes, and became a friend, colleague, and executive director of one of her treatment centres, Odyssey House in Flint/Saginaw, Michigan. “She didn't see them as garbage. She started relating to them.” Densen-Gerber consulted other doctors involved in treating addiction and developed the model of a drug free therapeutic community in which users would live together and embark on a “journey of self discovery,” using mostly group therapy techniques borrowed from many schools of psychiatry, Brown said.

The group lived in 11 temporary quarters. They moved so often that someone said they were on an odyssey, and the name stuck. Their first permanent home was in East Harlem, where the rent was a bargain basement $17 a month. Today there are Odyssey Houses in New York, New Hampshire, Michigan, Louisiana, Utah, New Zealand, and Australia.

Densen-Gerber formed powerful friendships, including one with Nelson Rockefeller, then governor of New York state, whose house she picketed to demand funding for her programmes. His support was important when drug free programmes were competing for funds with methadone maintenance programmes.

In 1979 Densen-Gerber was the subject of a scathing profile in New York magazine, “The Mysterious Mistress of Odyssey House,” which said, “Most people think of Odyssey House as a solid, benevolent program... Dr Densen-Gerber... has also emerged as an influential spokeswoman for sexually abused children. Today, she has become a familiar figure at public forums and legislative functions, detailing the horrors of addiction and ill treated youngsters... The cameras whirr and the lawmakers reach for the handkerchiefs and appropriations [funds]. It's a good show... But there is another side to this tale...”

The article detailed unpleasant physical conditions in the New York Odyssey Houses, high staff turnover, financial irregularities including use of drug programme funds to pay for Densen-Gerber's luxurious lifestyle, and “an extraordinary measure of personal support and loyalty from those around her.” This was said to include using patients and staff for personal services. She was also reported to humiliate patients as part of the therapeutic process. Because of her powerful friends, the article said, ordinary bureaucrats were reluctant to confront her about mismanagement. The New York Times said that Densen-Gerber paid back a substantial amount in excessive personal expenses to close a state investigation.

Ronald Brown of the Flint/Saginaw Odyssey House saw a far different woman when he was a 23 year old drug user with a prison record who was sent by a court to Odyssey House. “She was unlike anyone else. She came from a higher social class but she was genuinely concerned about addicts. She believed in our potential. She was dynamic. I became hopeful and motivated because of her. She was the smartest woman I ever met. She had a gift, a genius, in relating to people. She got us to face reality. She knew how to pull out the best in people.” Brown said that Densen-Gerber's three segment programme of change enabled users to understand the underlying cause of their problems and bring themselves to self actualisation, taking responsibility for themselves and for other people. It took an average of 10 to 12 months, he said.

After 1983, Densen-Gerber moved on, although retaining ties with the Flint/Saginaw centre. “She stepped aside and let [the programmes] fly,” Brown said. She became involved with issues of child abuse and sexual abuse, and helped bring about the first federal rules to protect children, he said.

“I saw her in March. She knew she was dying. She'd had breast cancer and it had been in remission for almost five years. In March she said, `It's back,' and she came to say goodbye. But then she got down to work and saw 20 or 25 patients and did case reviews. She feared suffering, but she died in her sleep.”

He added, “She made a tremendous contribution, developing a teachable method that can be replicated and that will outlive her.”

Dr Densen-Gerber, who was divorced from Dr Michael Baden, former chief medical examiner of New York city, leaves three children and two grandchildren.

Judianne Densen-Gerber, founder of the Odyssey House therapeutic communities for drug treatment (b New York city 1934; q New York University School of Medicine 1963), died from metastatic breast cancer on 11 May 2003.