Dorothy Blitsten PhD and Lionel Blitzsten MD Correspondence with Harry Stack Sullivan MD, 1932 - 1977

Summary

Creator:
Blitsten, Dorothy R. (Dorothy Rubovits), 1907-
Abstract:
This collection contains letters written principally by Harry Stack Sullivan to Lionel Blitzsten and Dorothy R. Blitsten from 1932-1944 concerning professional and personal matters. The collection has no series and needs to be reprocessed.
Extent:
1 box .21 linear feet
Language:
English

Background

Scope and content:

This collection contains letters written principally by Harry Stack Sullivan to Lionel Blitzsten and Dorothy R. Blitsten from 1932-1944 concerning professional and personal matters. Some mention psychoanalytic developments in Chicago. A few letters were written by Ernest Hadley and others and are dated 1939-1966. The collection is comprised of two folders with 24 letters written by Sullivan, in addition to an unpublished manuscript written by Dorothy Blitsten about Sullivan. Notes and correspondence written by Eric Carlson about Sullivan and the manuscript are included in the collection. The collection has no series and needs to be reprocessed.

Biographical / historical:

Harry Stack Sullivan was born on February 21, 1892 in Norwich, New York and graduated from the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery in 1917. His psychoanalysis was with Clara M. Thompson. He worked variously for St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C. as a veterans' liaison officer, 1922-1923; Director of Clinical Research, Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Baltimore, 1930-1939, and was in a private psychiatry practice in New York City, 1939-1949. He was an early member of the Washington-Ba1timore Psychoanalytic Society. In 1938, he established the William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation in New York City. It supported the Washington School of Psychiatry and Psychiatry, which Sullivan edited.

While attending Johns Hopkins University’s Phipps Clinic he was influenced by Adolf Meyer, who conceived of mental disorders as reaction patterns to life situations confronting the sufferers. Very early in his career, Sullivan abandoned Freud’s pleasure principle, and, along with it, most of Freud’s ideas on psychosexual development. With assistance from anthropologists and sociologists, he developed a psychiatric system that stressed social forces as determinants of personality traits and psychological disorders. Sullivan looked upon the "interpersonal event" as the unit of psychological study. He also differed from Freud in his belief that free association was subordinate to direct communication between patient and therapist. He attempted to apply psychiatry to the study of social problems and took part in the 1948 UNESCO study of "tensions that cause wars." He served as a consultant in establishing psychiatric examinations for recruits for the Selective Service System in 1940. Sullivan died on January 14, 1949 in Paris.

Dorothy Rubovits Blitsten was born in 1907 and was a psychoanalyst with a Ph.B. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. She was Associate Professor of Sociology at Hunter College. In addition to extensive training in psychiatry, her background includes pre-medical work and two years of medicine. Blitsten’s books include Psychoanalysis Explained, 1936 and The World of the Family: A Comparative Study of Family Organization in their Social and Cultural Settings, 1963.

Lionel Blitzsten was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in the United States. He was the first president of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society, which he helped to found. His main impact on American psychoanalysis is characterized by the direct personal influence he had on students and associates. Blitzsten was born in 1893 and died in 1952.

Acquisition information:
Dorothy R. Blitsten donated the correspondence involving herself, Lionel Blitzsten and Harry Stack Sullivan to the Archives of Psychiatry (now the Oskar Diethelm Library), New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in 1969.

Access and use

Restrictions:

There are no access restrictions on this material.

Terms of access:

Written permission must be obtained from the Oskar Diethelm Library and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.

Location of this collection:
DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry: History, Policy and the Arts
Weill Cornell Medical College
525 East 68th Street, Box 140
New York, NY 10065, United States
Link to repository site
Contact:
212-746-3728