Amherst, Gerald M. Platt, a highly regarded sociologist credited with helping to establish a connection between his discipline and psychoanalysis, died on May 7th at the Hospice of the Fisher Home in Amherst, Massachusetts.  The cause was Alzheimer’s disease.  He was 82. 

        Gerald was born on February 13, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of four boys.  His father Samuel was a garment factory foreman and his mother Rose (Perlman) a homemaker. He worked his way through Brooklyn College as a stevedore at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

        He received his PhD in Sociology from UCLA in 1963 and began his teaching career that year at Harvard University in the Department of Social Relations.  In the late ’60s he was part of a faculty movement to increase minority admissions to the College and to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.  As a colleague commented, “Injustice really blew his stack!” 

        In 1970 he joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and served from 1971-1974 as the faculty representative to the Commission on the Future of the University.  He retired from Umass in 2011 as a full professor, having served two terms as department chair. 

        Among his best known publications are “The American University,” co-authored with Talcott Parsons, “The Wish to Be Free:  Society, Psyche and Value Change,” with historian Fred Weinstein and “Advances in Psychoanalytic Sociology,” with Jerome Rabow and Marion Goldman.  In addition to his focus on psychoanalysis, he was a noted scholar of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, particularly of the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

        For almost fifty years, Professor Platt answered the call to teach with enthusiasm, honesty and generosity.  He will be remembered as a loving, generous, passionate and deeply loyal friend and father and grandfather. 

        He is survived by his son Lucas and granddaughter Amelia of Montclair, New Jersey and his daughter Genevieve, her partner Gustavo Larizzati and granddaughter Eva of Brooklyn, New York.  The funeral service was private and a celebration of his life is planned for later this spring. Obituary and memorial register at www.douglassfuneral.com

Service details, Social networking, Memorial Guestbook and Slideshow are available here.