Joan Krash

Joan Krash, a psychologist and artist, died at home on April 23, 2025 at the age of 93. A lively and skeptical person, Dr. Krash pursued her many interests with vigor. A Washingtonian for over seventy years, Dr. Krash had careers as a journalist, a psychologist, an artist, and was a wedding officiant for her first two grandchildren. She loved good conversation, Japanese flower arranging (Ikebana), and gardening. She delighted in teaching her infant great-grandson how to suck his toes.

Born in New York City in 1932, Dr. Krash was raised in Long Beach and in The Bronx. She spent a few of her teenage years in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and loved skiing in the nearby mountains. She then moved to Washington DC, where she attended George Washington University and simultaneously began her first career as a journalist. In her work with the New York Journal of Commerce, she wrote articles on prescription drugs, chemicals in cosmetics, radioactive cortisone, fertilizers, and DDT.

In her early 40s, she earned her PhD in psychology at American University. She practiced psychotherapy, conducted supervision, and taught classes at the Washington School of Psychiatry on dreams and the use of imagery in psychotherapy. Dr. Krash conducted groups utilizing the Tavistock psychoanalytic approach, and trained lawyers in interviewing techniques. When a friend of hers developed ALS, she studied and wrote about ways of helping caregivers and patients work together.

After several decades, she shifted to a third career as a visual artist where she continued to explore dreams and the interrelationship of conscious and unconscious processes through the mediums of printmaking, collage, oils, acrylics, and watercolor.

Joan was married for 67 years to Abe Krash, an attorney with a great sense of humor. He died in 2024. Together, Joan and Abe enjoyed concerts and theater, conversations about their work, and adventurous travel. On one memorable trip, by chance their 1989 tour of China ended in Beijing, where the pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square were eager to talk with Joan and Abe about democracy. On another intrepid adventure years earlier, Joan and Abe arrived at the cave where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, just after the park closed. They accepted a risky offer from a guide who carried them and their children one at a time on his back, across a narrow, steep ridge, and then down into the cave.

Dr. Krash is remembered and loved by her daughters Carla and Jessica (David Freeman), grandchildren Zachary (Amelia Rudberg), Rachel (Jessica Freeman-Wong), Francesca (Zach Weiss), and Jinx, great-grandchildren Ezra and Kaia and many cousins, friends, colleagues, and neighbors.

Donations in Joan’s name can be made to Art Enables (https://art-enables.org)