Bertram Cohler
Bertram Joseph Cohler | |
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Born | 3 December 1938 Psychoanalyst, psychologist |
Institutions | University of Chicago, Harvard University, Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School |
Part of a series of articles on |
Psychoanalysis |
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Bertram Joseph Cohler (3 December 1938 – 9 May 2012) was an American psychologist, psychoanalyst, and educator primarily associated with the
Early life and education
Bertram "Bert" Joseph Cohler was born in Chicago on 3 December 1938 to Theresa Belle "Betty" Cohler (née Cahn) and Jonas Robert Cohler.[5] His siblings were Jonas Robert Cohler Jr., and Betsy Cohler.[6] From the age of 10 to 17 years old, he was a student at the Orthogenic School, a residential treatment center for children with emotional disturbances run by Bruno Bettelheim; Bert Cohler lived in the Pirates Dormitory with seven other boys. Dean Robert Hess Koff PhD of Washington University in St. Louis was in the Pirates dorm when Bert arrived. Sandy Lewis, aka Salim Bonnor Lewis, founding managing partner of S B Lewis & Company in Wall Street, now of Lewis Family Farm, Essex, New York, was in the Pirates dorm for one month as Cohler matriculated. Koff and Lewis and numerous other Orthogenic students worked for Bettelheim at The Orthogenic School after graduating. Koff and Lewis were asked by Bettelheim to run The School. Years apart, Lewis and Cohler attended U-High, The Laboratory School of The University of Chicago, while living at The Orthogenic School. Lewis was present and visited with Cohler at The Orthogenic School in the last week of Cohler's tenure as director. Lewis was a donor in support of Bettelheim and in support of the director that followed Cohler, Jacqueline Seevak Sanders PhD. Sanders was a counselor at The School in 1952 when Cohler, Koff and Lewis were enrolled. Barbara A. Lisco was co-counselor with Jacqui Seevak in 1956–1957. In 1960 Lisco married Lewis. In 1963–1964. Lewis became Seevak's co-counselor. Cohler became The School's director as Bettelheim retired the first time, and was celebrated as one of its most successful graduates.[7]
Cohler received his A.B. in Human Development from the
Educator, clinician, administrator
In 1969, Cohler became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and began working at the
In 1974, Cohler was promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, and in 1981 he was made full Professor. He was named William Rainey Harper Professor in Comparative Human Development and the college, with affiliations in the Department of Comparative Human Development, the Department of Psychology, and the Department of Psychiatry. He remained at the University of Chicago for the rest of his career.
During the course of his prolific teaching career Cohler taught in the departments of Human Development, Psychology, Psychiatry and Education, in the Graham School, and in the undergraduate College. Cohler was a strong advocate of undergraduate education at the university. For most of his career he taught in and served as chairman of the year-long Social Sciences core sequence of courses, Self, Culture and Society, in the college. He famously stated "I like all my students to call me by my first name, because we're in seminar together and I want to emphasize that we're all equal before the texts." Cohler won multiple teaching awards, including the Quantrell Award[9] for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1972 and 1999 and the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for enriching student life in 2006.[10]
Cohler was a practicing clinical psychologist and certified in psychoanalysis by the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He provided pro bono psychotherapy in private practice and through the Center on Halsted. His clinical work with patients of all ages informed his scholarly work on the life course, psychoanalysis, and identity work of LGBT individuals.[11][12]
Cohler served on the first steering committee of Division 39 (the Division of Psychoanalysis) of the
Scholarly work
In his research, Cohler attended to the evolution of identity and experience of self over the life span, with insights from psychoanalysis, particularly Heinz Kohut, and the psychological study of development including the work of Lev Vygotsky.[15] Cohler made significant contributions across social science disciplines, bringing together ideas from life-course perspectives on human development (influenced especially by the work of Bernice Neugarten and Glen Elder) with psychoanalytic theory and narrative psychology and the personological study of lives. Cohler is credited as one of the early advocates of a narrative approach to the study of lives, with his widely cited article "Personal narrative and the life course."[16]
In his later work, he turned his attention to ways in which people "make meanings of misfortune". He worked extensively on narrative analysis, informed by psychoanalytic insights, of the memoirs of men and women who were internees in the extermination camps of the Third Reich, and written at some point in the post-war period. He looked at the manner in which history and social change influenced how these life writers portrayed their experiences before, during, and following the terrible experiences in Auschwitz and other death camps.
Books
- Cohler, B. J., H. U. Grunebaum, & D. M. Robbins. (1981) Mothers, Grandmothers, and Daughters: personality and child care in three-generation families. New York: Wiley. ISBN 978-0471059004.
- Galatzer-Levy, R. M. & B. J. Cohler (1994). The Essential Other: a developmental psychology of the self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0465020669.
- Cohler, B. J. & R. M. Galatzer-Levy (2000). The Course of Gay and Lesbian Lives: social and psychoanalytic perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226113036.
- Cohler, B. J. (2007). Writing Desire: sixty years of gay autobiography. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299222000.
Edited books
- Anthony, J. E. & B. J. Cohler (1987) The Invulnerable child. New York: Guilford Press.
- Field, K., B. J. Cohler, & G. Wool. (1989) Learning and education: psychoanalytic perspectives. Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
- Hammack, P.L., & B. J. Cohler. (2009) The story of sexual identity: Narrative perspectives on the gay and lesbian life course. New York: Oxford University Press.
Selected articles and chapters
- Cohler, B. J. (1977). "Some problems in the study of aging and death." Human Development, 20(4): 210–216.
- Cohler, B. J. (1982). "Personal narrative and the life course." In: P. Baltes & O. G. Brim (Eds.), Life span development and behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 205–241). New York: Academic Press.
- Boxer, A. M. & B. J. Cohler (1989). "The life course of gay and lesbian youth: an immodest proposal for the study of lives." Journal of Homosexuality, 17(3-4): 315–355.
- Cohler, B. J. & M. J. Jenuwine (1995). "Suicide, life course, and life story." Int Psychogeriatr 7(2): 199–219.
- Cohler, B. J. (1996). "Psychic reality and the analyst: the inner working of the analyst's mind." International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 77 ( Pt 1): 89–95.
- Cohler, B. J., & Hammack, P. L. (2006). "Making a gay identity: Life-story and the construction of a coherent self." In. D.P. McAdams, R. Josselson & A. Lieblich (Eds). Identity and story: Crafting self in narrative. Washington DC: The American Psychological Association, 151–17.
- Cohler B. J., & Galatzer-Levy, R. (2006). Love in the classroom: Desire and transference in teaching and learning. In: Boldt, G.M., & Salvo, P.M. (Eds.) Love's return: Psychoanalytic essays on teaching and learning. New York: Routledge, 243–26.
- Cohler, B. J., & Smith, G. (2006). "Cultural dilemmas of masculinity." In: Bedford, V.H. & B.F. Turner (Eds.) Men in relationships: A new look from a life-course perspective. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 3–2.
- Cohler, B. J., & Hammack, P. L. (2007). "The psychological world of the gay teenager: Social change and the issue of 'Normality,'" The Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 47–5.
- Cohler, B. J., & Hostetler, A. (2007). "Gay lives in the third age." In: P. Wink & J. James (Eds.) The crown of life: Dynamics of the early post-retirement period. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 263–28.
- Cohler, B. J., & Galatzer-Levy, R.(2007) "What kind of a science is psychoanalysis?" Psychoanalytic Inquiry (Special Issue: Psychoanalysis and science (Ed. M. Bornstein), 27, 547–58.
- Cohler, B. J.(2008). "Nostalgia and the disappointment with modernity: Memory books as adaptive response to Shoah." In: W. Parsons, D. Jonte-Pace, & S. Henking (Eds.) Mourning religion. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 201–22.
- Cohler, B. J. (2008). "Two lives, two times: Life-writing after Shoah," Narrative Inquiry, 18, 1–2.
See also
References
- ^ Bertaux, D., and M. Kohli (1984) The Life Story Approach: A Continental View. Annual Review of Sociology, 10: 215-237.
- ^ van Eeden-Moorefield, Brad (2010) Review of The story of sexual identity: Narrative perspectives on the gay and lesbian life course. Journal of Marriage and Family. Vol 72(5), Oct 2010, pp. 1460-1462
- ^ Roughton, Ralph E. (2002). Rethinking Homosexuality: What it Teaches us about Psychoanalysis. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 50:733-763
- ^ • Cohler, B.(2008). Nostalgia and the disappointment with modernity: Memory books as adaptive response to Shoah. In. W. Parsons, D. Jonte-Pace, and S. Henking (Eds.) Mourning religion. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 201-22.
- ^ Obituary: Bertram Joseph Cohler, from Tributes.com
- ^ Obituary: Jonas Robert Cohler, Jr., from the Chicago Tribune, 2011
- ^ The Strange Case of Dr. B, from the New York Review of Books, 27 Feb 2003
- ^ Solving The Puzzle That Was Bruno Bettelheim, from the Chicago Tribune, 1990
- ^ Obituary: Bertram Cohler, from the University of Chicago Maroon, 2012
- ISBN 978-0226113036.
- ISBN 978-0299222000.
- ^ Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis: History Archived April 30, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/call-for-nominations-for-the-henry-a-murray-award-5DUsrUVvf8 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- ^ Galatzer-Levy, R. M. and B. J. Cohler (1994). The essential other: a developmental psychology of the self. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
- ^ Cohler, B. J. (1982). Personal narrative and the life course. In P. Baltes & O.G. Brim (Eds.), Life span development and behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 205-241). New York: Academic Press.