Ruth Selke Eissler (born in
Odesa,
Russian Empire on February 21, 1906, and died in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
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on October 7, 1989) was a Jewish–American physician and psychoanalyst. She is sometimes known as Ruth Eissler-Selke.
Life
Ruth was born in
Odesa (now
Ukraine). Her father Ludwig Selke ran a bank and then worked as a grain export trader. Her mother, Jenny Lewin, was born on May 17, 1877, in
Warsaw. In addition to Ruth, the couple had four other children: Eugen, Rudya, Eva and Angela.
The family moved several times in her youth to
Hamburg and
Danzig.
Ruth Selke obtained her
abitur
''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen year ...
in 1925 and then graduated from medical school at the
University of Freiburg, Germany in 1930. She completed her residency in
Heidelberg and after receiving her Doctor of Medicine degree at the
University of Heidelberg (1932) and practiced in the Psychiatric Department of the Buerger Hospital in
Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...
.
Her dissertation was titled, ''Medical Histories of Six Cases: The Contribution of Social Hygiene to the Question of Alcoholism and Tuberculosis.''
When
Hitler came to power in 1933 in Germany, she went into self-exile in
Vienna and worked at the psychiatric hospital in Rosenhügel. She specifically trained in
psychoanalysis and was admitted as a member of the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1937.
She began her own analysis with
Theodor Reik but he went into exile in the
Netherlands. She continued her analysis with Richard Sterba.
Notably, she later became the analyst of
Heinz Kohut who was a well regarded psychoanalyst.
In Vienna, she met the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
Kurt Robert Eissler (1908–1999), co-founder of the
Sigmund Freud Archives, and they married in 1936.
After
Austria was
annexed
Annexation (Latin ''ad'', to, and ''nexus'', joining), in international law, is the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. It is generally held to be an illegal act ...
to
Germany by
Hitler on March 12, 1938 (an event known as the
Anschluss) the couple moved to the United States arriving in
Chicago, where she joined the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society while working as a child psychiatrist at the
Michael Reese Hospital.
During the
Second World War, Ruth Eissler was a consulting physician in a program for young delinquent women in Chicago and in 1949 published a paper about her work.
In 1948, Ruth and her husband moved to
New York City, where she became a member and educator of the
New York Psychoanalytic Society.
Eissler later became secretary and then vice-president of the
International Psychoanalytic Association.
From 1950 to 1985, she was one of four editors of ''
The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child
The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child is an annual journal, published by Taylor & Francis, which contains scholarly articles on topics related to child psychiatry and psychoanalysis. The journal was founded in 1945 by Anna Freud, Heinz Hartmann, a ...
'', founded in 1945 by
Anna Freud,
Heinz Hartmann and
Ernst Kris, and published annually.
Ruth Eissler's other writings included poetry, several short stories and a novel (that was never published). In celebration of her seventieth birthday, a collection of her German-language poetry was finally published In 1976 by Abaris Books in New York.
Ruth Eissler died in New York on October 7, 1989, survived by her husband.
The Selke-Eissler family collection
The
Leo Baeck Institute in
Manhattan maintains the Selke-Eissler Family Collection, which contains archival material from family members under the identifier: AR 10926 / MF 875. Archives are from 1914 through the 1940s and mention the following individuals and families: Selke family, Eissler family, Eugen Selke, Ruth Selke Eissler and Jenny Selke. The archives contain items written in German, English and Russian.
Selected works
* Selke, Ruth. "Sechs Lebensläufe als sozialhygienischer Beitrag zur Frage Alkoholismus und Tuberkulose." ''Klinische Wochenschrift'' 11.19 (1932): 805–807.
*Eissler-Selke, Ruth, et al. eds. (1945-1985) ''Psychoanalytic Study of the Child''. United States, Random House Publishing Group.
*Eissler-Selke, Ruth. (1946). About the historical truth in a case of delusion. ''Psychoanalytic Review'', ''33'', 442–459.
*Eissler-Selke, Ruth. (1949). Observations in a home for delinquent girls. ''Psychoanalytic Study of the Child'', ''3-4'', 449–460.
*Eissler-Selke, Ruth, Blitzstein, N. Lionel, and Eissler, Kurt R. (1950). Emergence of hidden ego tendencies during dream analysis. ''International Journal of Psycho-Analysis'', ''31'', 12–17.
*Freud, Anna, and Ruth Selke Eissler. (1965). ''The psychoanalytic study of the child''. Vol. 3. Yale University Press.
* Eissler-Selke, Ruth. (1976). ''Gezeiten: Gedichte in deutscher Sprache''. New York: Abaris Books.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eissler, Ruth Selke
1906 births
1989 deaths
Jewish psychoanalysts
American psychoanalysts
American people of German-Jewish descent
People from Odesa
Emigrants from the Russian Empire
Immigrants to the German Empire
Immigrants to the United States
20th-century American psychologists