Longtime Berkeley resident a psychoanalyst, clinician, author,

founder of California Revels
By Katherine Pfrommer, Staff Writer, Oakland Tribune
Inside Bay Area
 

Elizabeth "Lisby" Lloyd Mayer was a psychoanalyst, author, associate clinical professor and accomplished singer who founded the California Revels.

The longtime Berkeley resident died Saturday from complications of intestinal scleroderma while visiting her parents in Hanover, N.H. She was 57.

"She was a person of enormous verve, vitality, compassion and talent," said Daphne de Marneffe, Ms. Mayer's colleague and friend since 1987. "She had an extremely active intellect."

Born in New York City on Dec. 4, 1947, Ms. Mayer grew up in Holland, Vienna, Virginia and Washington, D.C. She attended boarding school in New York and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1969.

She earned her doctorate from Stanford in 1974. In 1984, she graduated from the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. She became a training and supervising analyst for the institute in 1991.

She also maintained a private practice in Berkeley for 30 years.

"I think the thread that ran through her whole life was an interest in understanding human relationships and love — and the healing power of human relationships," said de Marneffe.

Ms. Mayer was an associate clinical professor in the psychology department at UC Berkeley and in the psychiatry department at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco.

She was the founder and artistic director of California Revels, an Oakland-based group that hosts a December pageant mixing cultural and Christmas elements from around the globe to celebrate the end of the shortest day of the year. The event involves audience participation, with everybody singing, dancing and reveling together.

"Revels was a big place in her heart and her life," said Dirk Burns, the group's managing director. "She was the busiest, most involved person I ever met. She never did just one thing at a time, she did 15. She could write a book, have a private practice, lecture across the county and still be a beacon here at Revels."

At the time of her death, Ms. Mayer was finishing her book, "Extraordinary Knowing: Making Sense of the Inexplicable in Everyday Life." The tome explores the link between science and anomalous phenomena — or the mind/body connection.

She published many papers and book chapters on female development, clinical technique, the nature of science and intuition. She was also an in-demand lecturer, an editorial board member of several major journals and Alameda County's Woman of the Year for Arts and Culture in 1995.

She was a fellow of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories at Princeton, on the research faculty of the Institute for Health and Healing at California Pacific Medical Center, and a visiting scholar in Human Development at Harvard University.

Ms. Mayer is survived by parents David and Pamela Mayer; daughters Meg and Byrdie Renik; sisters Rebecca and Anneke Mayer; and brother Michael Mayer.

In lieu of flowers, the family has suggested donations to California Revels.