Scope and Content Note
The papers of Bertram David Lewin (1896-1971) span the years 1883-1974, with the bulk of the material dating from 1927 to 1970. The collection documents Lewin's contributions to psychoanalysis in the United States through his writings, teaching, and involvement in various psychoanalytic organizations. The papers consist of correspondence, diaries, biographical data, reports, surveys, speeches and writings, school papers, certificates, legal documents, and photographs. The collection is organized into five series: Family and School Papers , General Correspondence , Subject File , Writings File , and Oversize .
Lewin was born in 1896 in Victoria, Texas, the son of Samuel Lewin, a German immigrant, and Justine Levy, a Texas native. Following his 1916 graduation from the University of Texas in Austin, Lewin enrolled in Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, where he studied with psychiatrist Adolf Meyer. Lewin received his medical degree in 1920 and, after completing his residency in Baltimore, worked for several years with Charles B. Dunlap at the New York Psychiatric Institute on Ward's Island. Like many early students of psychoanalysis, Lewin spent several years in Europe attending classes, working on supervised cases, and undergoing analysis. During his time in Europe between 1926 and 1927, Lewin worked first with Paul Schuster in the Friedrich Wilhelm Krankenhaus and later attended the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1927 Lewin returned to New York where he established a practice in psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
Upon his return to the United States, Lewin became active in several psychoanalytic institutions. In 1931 Lewin became one of the founders of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, whose curriculum was closely modeled on that of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. A year later, he established the Psychoanalytic Quarterly with Gregory Zilboorg, Franwood E. Williams, and Dorian Feigenbaum. Lewin remained on the periodical's editorial board until his death in 1971. Lewin served as president of the New York Psychoanalytic Society from 1936 to 1937 and of the American Psychoanalytic Association from 1946 to 1947.
Many of Lewin's writings became standard psychoanalytic texts. His early works focus on compulsive character, the body as phallus, claustrophobia, and hypomania. Later writings deal particularly with the psychology of dreams and elation. Fluent in German and Spanish, Lewin also translated works by Franz Alexander, Karl Abraham, Otto Fenichel, and Angel Garma. In 1955 he accepted the directorship of the American Psychoanalytic Association's survey of psychoanalytic education. Lewin and Helen Ross, the project's associate director, published their findings in Psychoanalytic Education in the United States in 1960. Mixed reaction to the way in which the survey was conducted and to its final report led to Lewin and Ross's resignations in 1961. For the next ten years, until his death in 1971, Lewin taught psychology and psychoanalysis at the University of Pittsburgh.
The Family and School Papers include family correspondence, legal documents, and genealogical information. Among the earliest material is an autograph book kept by Lewin's mother, Justine Levy, between 1883 and 1888, and a set of diaries and photographs recording a trip taken by Lewin and his parents to Europe in 1910. The series also contains student papers, including class notes and other material, from Lewin's undergraduate work at the University of Texas and medical studies at Johns Hopkins University. This latter material includes notes from Adolf Meyer's psychology class. Although little material exists in this series from Lewin's years in Berlin, a letter written in 1926 to Lewin's mother-in-law, Irma Benjamin, contains an account of a visit paid by Lewin and his wife to the Freud family.
The General Correspondence series traces developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice from the mid-1920s to 1970. Correspondence contains lively exchanges with colleagues, including August Aichhorn, Catherine Bacon, K. R. Eissler, Otto Fenichel, Anna Freud, Maxwell Gitelson, Ives Hendrick, Ernest Jones, Edith Jacobson, Marion E. Kenworthy, Karl A. Menninger, Adolf Meyer, Herman Nunberg, Hanns Sachs, Max Schur, James Strachey, Robert Waelder, and Fritz Wittels, among others. Lewin's correspondence also includes letters from Felix Frankfurter concerning efforts to aid European psychoanalysts in Axis countries during the 1930s, a letter from novelist Thornton Wilder discussing The Ides of March, and correspondence with Texas politician Maury Maverick.
The Subject File largely concerns Lewin's involvement in various psychoanalytic organizations. Lewin's directorship of and eventual resignation from the American Psychoanalytic Association survey of psychoanalytic education project is documented by correspondence, minutes, recommendations, and reports. The series also contains files from Lewin's association with the University of Pittsburgh Medical School during the last decade of his life. Other activities covered in the Subject File include efforts to secure Edith Jacobson's release after her arrest by the Gestapo in 1936, Lewin's psychological evaluation of German prisoners of war in 1945, and his chairmanship of the American Psychoanalytic Association's Freud centenary celebrations in 1956. Posthumous files contain writings by Jacob A. Arlow, Lawrence S. Kubie, and Jerry O'Mara on Lewin's life and contributions to psychoanalysis.
The Writings File includes manuscripts, printed copies, and research material from Lewin's articles, lectures, books, reviews, and poetry. Topics covered include Lewin's research on dreams, elation, compulsive behavior, and psychoanalytic education. The series includes a long run of correspondence concerning Lewin's dream screen theories, as well as manuscripts and publishers' correspondence regarding The Image and the Past and Lewin's translation of Karl Abraham's On Character and Libido Development. Writings by various colleagues complete the series.