Hedda Bolgar (August 19, 1909 May 13, 2013) was a

psychoanalyst PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: + . is a set of Theory, theories and Therapy, therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a bo ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, who maintained an active practice when she was over 100 years old. She saw patients four days a week at age 102.

Early life

Bolgar was born in Zurich, Switzerland on August 19, 1909. At age 14, Bolgar became a vegetarian. She was the only child of Elek Bolgar, a Hungarian historian and diplomat, and Elza Stern, a reporter who was one of the few women to cover World War I. Elek and Elza Bolgar were communists; they cancelled her ninth birthday so they could take part in a civil uprising in Hungary.

Career in Vienna

Bolgar studied at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

. She studied under

Charlotte Bühler Charlotte Bühler (née Malachowski; December 20, 1893 – February 3, 1974) was a German-American developmental psychologist. Life Bühler was born Charlotte Berta Malachowski in Berlin, the elder of two children of Jewish government archite ...

and earned her doctorate in 1934. She knew

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 ...

and attended

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

's lectures. In the mid-1930s, Bolgar developed the "Little World Test" (also known as the "Bolgar—Fischer World Test") with her close friend Liselotte Fischer. It was a nonverbal, cross-cultural test similar to the Rorshach Ink Blot Test or the

Thematic Apperception Test Thematic apperception test (TAT) is a projective psychological test developed during the 1930s by Henry A. Murray and Christiana D. Morgan at Harvard University. Proponents of the technique assert that subjects' responses, in the narratives they ...

. When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Bolgar fled Vienna.

Career in the United States

After arriving in the US, Bolgar trained at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute and taught at the University of Chicago. While in the Midwest, Bolgar gave training on the "Little World Test." Bolgar was chief of psychology at Mt. Sinai Hospital (now Cedars-Sinai Medical Center). She helped found the California School of Professional Psychology, the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies and the Wright Institute Los Angeles, a postgraduate training center and clinic. When Bolgar was 95, she helped organize a three-day conference called "The Uprooted Mind: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Living in an Unsafe World." In 2012, at the age of 102, Bolgar was still seeing patients four days a week. At 102, she gave a lecture on "Dogma and Flexibility in Psychoanalytic Technique" before the

New Center for Psychoanalysis The New Center for Psychoanalysis is a psychoanalytic research, training, and educational organization that is affiliated with the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytic Association. It was formed in 2005 from the ...

, a Los Angeles group that offers advanced education to therapists.

Personal life

Bolgar's husband, economist Herbert Bekker, joined her in the U.S. in 1940 and the two moved to Los Angeles in 1956. The couple had no children. Bekker died in 1973. Bolgar died on May 13, 2013, at the age of 103. When she died, she was likely the oldest active member of the American Psychological Association (APA) and probably the oldest practicing psychoanalyst in the United States.

Quotes

* "I've lived through revolutions, famine, war. Things like that." * "There was a war, and I had vanilla ice cream for lunch." * "I started a lot of things at 65." *"The day the Nazis came to Vienna, I left. I had been very active in anti-Nazi politics and it really wasn't safe for me to stay. They came in on a Sunday and I decided Sunday was a good time to leave because on Monday they'd start working. They'd probably find the person who wrote those terrible articles about them pretty quickly." *"Women must be agents of their own lives. They must not be dependent on someone else to provide for them."

References

External links

*
Video and tribute to Hedda BolgarHedda Bolgar Psychotherapy Clinic
Wright Institute Los Angeles {{DEFAULTSORT:Bolgar, Hedda Place of death missing 1909 births 2013 deaths American centenarians American psychoanalysts American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent American people of Swiss-Jewish descent Jewish psychoanalysts Psychoanalysts from Vienna People from Los Angeles University of Vienna alumni Women centenarians