Psychology and Psychiatry

Content type
Collection
Naomi Harris Rosenblatt, 2010

Naomi Harris Rosenblatt

Naomi Harris Rosenblatt has had a distinguished career in Washington, D.C. as a psychotherapist and Bible teacher. Born in Haifa, she lived in Palestine during the time of the British Mandate and witnessed first hand the birth of the State of Israel. After her marriage to Peter Rosenblatt, a Washington attorney, she moved to the United States, which has been her home ever since.

Annette Baran, 2008

Annette Baran, 1927 - 2010

Annette made a huge difference in people’s awareness and understanding of the importance of truth and the civil right of access to one’s birth certificates and to information about one’s self.

Betty Jean Lifton

Betty Jean Lifton, 1926 - 2010

BJ made an amazing difference in the lives of adopted people, birthparents, and adoptive parents
and professionals.
She never wavered in her beliefs, and in her stand for human rights in adoption.

Debbie Friedman
December 28, 2011

The Lives They Lived: Jewish women to remember in 2011

Leah Berkenwald

“[Debbie Friedman] emphasized the value of every voice and the power of song to help us express ourselves and become our best selves. As she wrote for JWA's online exhibit Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution: 'The more our voices are heard in song, the more we become our lyrics, our prayers, and our convictions.' The woman who wrote the song that asks God to 'help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing' herself modeled for us what that looks like.”—Judith Rosenbaum.
Learn more >>

Topics: Feminism, LGBTQIA Rights, Business & Economics, Entrepreneurs, Teachers, Food, Jewish History, Television, Music, Music, Film, Social Work, Civil Service, Organizations and Institutions, Spirituality and Religious Life, Science, Psychology and Psychiatry
Edna Grace

Edna Barrabee Grace, 1914 - 2010

Prominent Boston-area therapist Edna Barrabee Grace enjoyed a long and successful career counseling couples. She helped many save their marriages by teaching them simply to be nice to each other.

Helen Mahut, 1942

Helen Mahut, 1920 - 2010

She was a pioneer in discovering the purpose of certain areas of the brain, and the implications regarding human behavior. Without Dr. Helen Mahut, modern medicine would have a very different view and understanding of memory, the human brain, and resultant human behavior.

Caryn Surkes

Caryn Surkes, 1956 - 2011

Caryn tenaciously challenged complacency, resignation, and lack of creativity wherever she found it. With her characteristic absence of judgment, she continually modeled for everyone the holding of hope for all those struggling with physical and mental disabilities.

Beverly Pepper and Carol Gilligan
April 22, 2011

Women who frame our world

Elizabeth Stone

Who are the women who frame our world? A small gathering of about 100 women met in San Francisco last week to hear from an array of leaders in the creative arts.

Topics: Sculpture, Women’s and Gender Studies, Dance, Spirituality and Religious Life, Psychology and Psychiatry, Writing, Poetry
Frances Feldman

Frances Feldman, 1912 - 2008

Frances Feldman's life and work are a testimony to the highest standards of social work scholarship. They reflect compassion, systematic understanding, and relentless curiosity. A pioneering spirit, personally and intellectually, she changed the world she lived in and left indelible memories with all who knew her.

Carolyn Goodman, cropped

Carolyn Goodman, 1915 - 2007

On various occasions Carolyn met with young people, urged them to take on world challenges, ran essay contests for them and celebrated the winners enthusiastically, spoke in different settings about the importance of supporting the next generation and encouraging them to be involved in healing the world.

October 2, 2009

Sages and sex therapists - Dr. Ruth's "Heavenly Sex"

Leah Berkenwald

Last Thursday I went to see pioneering sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer talk about her book Heavenly Sex: Sexuality in the Jewish Tradition at Temple Israel in Boston, a program by the New Center for Arts and Culture. This was my first time seeing the legendary Dr. Ruth in person, and as predicted, I was in awe of this teeny-tiny bubbe and her stylish glasses.  I was excited to be there with my friends from the Jewish Women's Archive, community partner of the NCAC for this event.

Topics: Psychology and Psychiatry, Non-Fiction
Thumbnail of Rachel King on Joyce Brothers's Win on the $64,000 Challenge, 2015

Dr. Joyce Brothers wins $64,000 for boxing expertise

October 27, 1957

Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers put her boxing trivia to the test and came away with $64,000 on October 27, 1957.

Thumbnail of Rachel King on the Publication of Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice, 2015

Carol Gilligan publishes "In a Different Voice"

May 24, 1982

Carol Gilligan has built a career out of challenging the mainstream.

Helene Deutsch

Helene Deutsch publishes first volume of "The Psychology of Women"

April 27, 1944

Born in Poland and trained in psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, Helene Deutsch immigrated to Boston in 1935, where she joined the faculty of the ne

"Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Person Within" Front Cover by Hilde Bruch, 1973

Hilde Bruch publishes "The Importance of Overweight"

March 4, 1957

When The Importance of Overweight was published on March 4, 1957, Hilde Bruch was already a leading childhood obesity researcher.

Social Worker and Activist Maida Herman Solomon

Maida Herman Solomon

Professor of social economy Maida Solomon was recognized as a pioneer in the field, contributing to the “invention” of the field of psychiatric social work and overseeing its definition, its development of standards, and its integration with the other institutions of modern American medicine and education—in short, its professionalism.

Lydia Rapoport

Lydia Rapoport

Lydia Rapoport was a social worker, professor, caseworker, and advocate of social change. Her contributions to crisis theory transformed how social workers and therapists handle crisis intervention.

Nelly Wolffheim

Nelly Wolffheim

Nelly Wolffheim spent her career developing and teaching a kindergarten curriculum based around Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic framework. She taught this curriculum, which encouraged children to express their sexual desires, to Jewish women teachers in Berlin. After escaping Germany for England in 1939, Wolffheim struggled to continue her research but began publishing her work again after the war.

Charlotte Wolff

A pioneering German-Jewish lesbian and feminist physician, Charlotte Wolff became interested in sexology, psychotherapy, and chirology while working as a physician in Berlin’s working-class neighborhoods. Soon after the Nazis came to power she fled to France and then to England, where she began researching and writing books on chirology. In the 1960s she turned her research to homosexuality and published a landmark study on lesbianism.

Ruth Westheimer

Ruth Westheimer

Ruth Westheimer, who lost her entire family in the Holocaust, served in the Haganah, and received her Ed.D. from Columbia University, was an unlikely candidate for the role of host of a cheerful talk show about sex. However, her celebration of human sexuality, derived from Orthodox Judaism, made her an influential and highly successful proponent of joyful, responsible sex from the 1980s into the third decade of the twenty-first century.

Ethel Tobach

Born in the Ukraine, Ethel Tobach spent most of her life in New York City as a professor, museum curator, and above all, a prolific researcher. She also held several leadership positions in prominent scientific associations, often combining her scientific abilities with her passion for social activism. However, her accomplishments are often overlooked by the psychological community.
Cropped photo of Sabina Spielrein

Sabina Spielrein

Sabina Spielrein, a pioneer in the early years of psychoanalysis who made significant contributions to the field, was the first person to propose the thesis about instinctual life, which Freud later adapted. Until recently, Spielrein’s accomplishments and contributions were overlooked and forgotten.

Miriam Finn Scott

Miriam Finn Scott, a child diagnostician and educator, believed that the key to child development was educating parents as much as children. She founded the Children’s Garden, a clinic that studied relationships between parents and children and helped parents better support their children’s development. She also published two parenting books that were widely read and translated.
Sallyann Ann Sack

Sallyann Amdur Sack

Sallyann Amdur Sack, an American genealogist and psychologist, founded many innovations in contemporary Jewish genealogy. She graduated from Harvard University (Phi Beta Kappa) and received her doctorate from George Washington University and was a clinical psychologist until the early 2020s.
Marie Jahoda

Psychology in the United States

Although Jewish women in psychology generally deemphasized their Jewish identities in favor of identifying their work with scientific objectivity and universal human paradigms, they have been well represented in the field as theorists, researchers, and pioneers. They have made their most important contributions in two areas—clinical psychology and the social psychology of intergroup relations, especially as it involves groups marginalized in our society.

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