Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (born Elisabeth Bulkley Young; March 3, 1946 – December 1, 2011) was an American academic and
psychotherapist
Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome pro ...
, who from 2007 until her death resided in
Toronto, Ontario
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
, Canada. She published a wide range of books, most notably biographies of
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
and
Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
. Her 1982 biography of
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
won the first Harcourt Award while ''The Anatomy of Prejudices'' won the Association of American Publishers' prize for Best Book in Psychology in 1996. She was a member of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and co-founder of Caversham Productions, a company that makes psychoanalytic educational materials.
[Caversham Productions]
Retrieved January 17, 2011.
Life
Young-Bruehl's family on her mother's side ran a dairy farm on land near the head of
Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay ( ) is the largest estuary in the United States. The Bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region and is primarily separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula (including the parts: the ...
, and were active in local
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
politics. Her mother's father and grandfather (a newspaper editor) had been amateur scholars with a large private library. Her maternal grandmother was a ''
Mayflower
''Mayflower'' was an English ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After a grueling 10 weeks at sea, ''Mayflower'', with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, r ...
'' descendant, part of the Hooker and Bulkley families of
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
. Her father's family were Virginians, several trained in
Theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
at the
College of William & Mary
The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III ...
in
Williamsburg, Virginia
Williamsburg is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it had a population of 15,425. Located on the Virginia Peninsula ...
, where the family home, the ''Maupin-Dixon House'', is located. She grew up in
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
and
Delaware
Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...
, where her father worked as a teaching golf pro.
Then she attended
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a Private university, private liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York. The college models its approach to education after the Supervision system, Oxford/Cambridge system of one-on-one student-faculty tutorials. Sara ...
, where she studied poetry writing with
Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "ex ...
. Young-Bruehl left college for the New York City
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...
of the mid-1960s, but then completed her undergraduate studies at
The New School
The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...
(then the "New School for Social Research"). There she met and married Robert Bruehl,
[, see references.] whom she later divorced. Just as the
political theorist
A political theorist is someone who engages in constructing or evaluating political theory, including political philosophy. Theorists may be academics or independent scholars. Here the most notable political theorists are categorized by their ...
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
was joining the Graduate Faculty of the New School, Young-Bruehl enrolled as a Ph.D candidate in Philosophy. Arendt became Young-Bruehl's mentor and dissertation advisor. After earning her Ph.D. in 1974, Young-Bruehl took a faculty appointment the following year teaching Philosophy in the College of Letters,
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...
in
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
.
The next year, after Hannah Arendt died at 69, several of Arendt's émigré friends approached Young-Bruehl to take on the task of writing Arendt's biography. The resulting book, published in 1982, is still the standard work on Hannah Arendt's life. It has been translated into many languages,[ including recently (2010) Hebrew, and a second English edition came out in 2004.
Young-Bruehl's work on the Arendt biography gave her an increasingly strong interest in psychoanalysis. In 1983, she enrolled for clinical psychoanalytic training in ]New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...
. At New Haven's Child Study Center, she met several of Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
's American colleagues, and was invited to become Anna Freud's biographer, leading to the 1988 book ''Anna Freud: A Biography''.[ This had a second edition in 2008, with a new Preface.
In 1991] Young-Bruehl left Wesleyan and moved to Philadelphia, where she taught part-time at Haverford College
Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducational ...
and continued her psychoanalytic training at the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis, from which she graduated in 1999. She started a private practice as a therapist, first in Philadelphia and later in New York City.[ Throughout this time, she continued to publish books, including collections of her essays and the award-winning "The Anatomy of Prejudices". The book on prejudices was followed in 2012 by ''Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children'', published posthumously by ]Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
, Yale Universi ...
.
Young-Bruehl died of a pulmonary embolism on December 1, 2011. She was 65.
Works
* ''Conor Cruise O'Brien: An Appraisal'' (co-author: Joanne L. Henderson. Proscenium Press, 1974, )
* ''Freedom and Karl Jasper's Philosophy'' (Yale University Press, 1981, )
* ''Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World'' (Yale University Press 1982, ; Second Edition Yale University Press, 2004, )
* ''Vigil'' (novel, Louisiana State University Press, 1983, )
* ''Anna Freud: A Biography'' (Summit Books, New York, 1988, )
* ''Mind and the Body Politic'' (Routledge, Independence, Kentucky
Independence is a home rule-class city in Kenton County, Kentucky, in the United States. It is one of its county's two seats of government. The population was 24,757 at the time of the 2010 U.S. census, up from 14,982 at the 2000 census. It is t ...
, 1989, )
* Foreword to ''Between Hell and Reason: Essays From the Resistance Newspaper "Combat", 1944-1947'' (Wesleyan University Press, 1991, )
* ''Creative Characters'', (Routledge, 1991, )
* ''Freud on Women: A Reader'' (editor) (Norton, 1992, )
* ''Global Cultures: a Transnational Short Fiction Reader'' (editor, Wesleyan University Press, 1994, )
* ''The Anatomy of Prejudices'' (Harvard University Press, 1996, ),
* Foreword to 1997 re-issue of David Stafford-Clark's 1965 book, ''What Freud Really Said: An Introduction to His Life and Thought'' (Schocken Books, 1997, )
* ''Subject to Biography: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Writing Women's Lives'' (Harvard Univ Press, 1999, ),Table of Contents
/ref>
* ''Cherishment: a Psychology of the Heart '' (co-author: Faith Bethelard. Free Press, 2000, )
* ''Where Do We Fall When We Fall in Love?'' (essays, Other Press (NY), 2003, )
* ''Why Arendt Matters ''(Yale University Press, 2006, )
* ''Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children'' (Yale University Press, 2012, )
Notes
External links
References
* (biographical notes). Originally part of the publicity for ''Cherishment''.
Caversham Productions Biographies
– Retrieved January 17, 2011.
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's blog containing psychoanalytic and political essays
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth
1946 births
2011 deaths
20th-century American novelists
American women novelists
American women poets
Columbia University faculty
Psychology writers
American psychotherapists
The New School alumni
The New School faculty
Wesleyan University faculty
Sarah Lawrence College alumni
Deaths from pulmonary embolism
20th-century American women writers
20th-century American poets
20th-century American biographers
American women biographers
Novelists from New York (state)
Novelists from Connecticut
Historians from New York (state)
21st-century American women