The papers of Fredric Wertham (1895-1981) span the years 1818-1986, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period between 1945 and 1975. The collection consists of eight series: Freud-Frink File, General Correspondence, Research Files, Writings, Personal Miscellany, Photographs, Restricted, and Oversize. Material is in English, with some items in German and French.

The papers focus on the work of Wertham, a psychiatrist who studied in London, Erlangen, Munich, Würzburg, Paris, and Vienna. Following graduation from medical school in 1922, Wertham worked briefly at the Kraepelin Clinic in Munich under Emil Kraepelin, who developed the standard system for the classification of mental disorders. Later that year Wertham immigrated to the United States, where he accepted a position under Adolf Meyer at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins University. In 1926 Wertham published his first book in collaboration with Florence Hesketh, a biology instructor and sculptress, whom he married the next year. In 1932 they moved to New York, where Wertham was appointed senior psychiatrist at Bellevue Mental Hygiene Clinic. For the remainder of his professional career, Wertham lived in New York and was affiliated with numerous psychiatric organizations. In addition to his medical activities, he was a prolific writer and public speaker. In particular, he issued constant warnings about the harmful influence of violence in the mass media. In the late 1970s, Wertham and his wife retired to Bluehills, their country home in Kempton, Pennsylvania, where he died in 1981. Included in the papers are correspondence, research notes, writings, newspaper and magazine clippings, memoranda, reports, patient case files, transcripts of court proceedings, psychiatric tests, drawings, photographs, miscellaneous biographical information, and other materials pertaining to Wertham's work and to the history of psychiatry during his lifetime.

Although the Wertham Papers provide little documentation of the psychiatrist's early life in Germany and England, they do provide a full account of his professional life in the United States, especially after World War II. The Freud-Frink File in the collection contains patient case files, correspondence, miscellany, and writings by or about Horace Westlake Frink, the first disciple of Sigmund Freud to practice psychoanalysis in the United States. Wertham came to know Frink professionally while practicing at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic. Many years later, after Frink himself suffered a mental breakdown, Wertham became his psychiatrist. Following Frink's death in a mental institution in 1936, his young widow, Ruth Frink Sargent, gave Wertham materials relating to her husband. Included in the file are original letters between Freud and Frink.

Due to Wertham's practice of filing correspondence according to subject, his general correspondence comprises a small part of the papers. Among the prominent correspondents in the General Correspondence series are Emil A. Gutheil, Ernest Jones, Arthur Miller, and Wertham's parents, Sigmund and Mathilde Wertheimer. Located elsewhere in the collection are letters from Thomas Mann, Richard Wright, Arthur Miller, Alfred C. Kinsey, Ella Winter, Ida Macalpine, Taylor Caldwell, and Langston Hughes.

The Research Files constitute roughly half of the papers. They cover a vast array of topics, including art, crime, drugs, court cases involving Wertham, criminal case files, freedom of speech, censorship, obscenity, pornography, the Lafargue Clinic, noted individuals, political philosophies and economic systems, psychology, the Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center, race relations and civil rights, and violence in comic books, the mass media, movies, and television. The sections dealing with court cases and criminal case files reveal Wertham's fascination with the human propensity to commit violence. Other sections illustrate Wertham's contention that violence as portrayed in the mass media contributes to the breakdown of society, a belief that was expressed in much of his professional writing and speaking. The files on the Lafargue Clinic, race relations and civil rights, the Delaware desegregation case, and numerous other cases concerning racial bias indicate Wertham's dedication to abolishing racial prejudice and his efforts to improve the living standards of African Americans.

The Writings series also constitutes a large part of the papers. It consists of manuscripts of books, plays, articles and essays, scientific papers, interviews, speeches and lectures, book reviews, letters to editors, short stories, and poems, including drafts, galley proofs, page proofs, research materials, and related correspondence. Wertham's major works, Seduction of the Innocent, Dark Legend, Show of Violence, Sign for Cain, and Circle of Guilt, are represented by research notes, drafts, and related materials documenting the entire creative process. Wertham wrote more than a hundred articles and essays on subjects such as battered children, violence in comic books, movies, and television, the problems of parenting, juvenile delinquency, the Vietnam War, the mass media, and sex crimes. He was a prodigious reviewer of books, critiquing more than a hundred during his lifetime. Prominent in the collection are his reviews of works by colleagues A. A. Brill, K. R. Eissler, Otto Fenichel, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Emil A. Gutheil, Wilhelm Reich, Wilhelm Stekel, and Gregory Zilboorg. Wertham contributed to the works of others by way of introductions, essays, chapters, poems, and other short forms, and also wrote numerous papers discussing the scientific writings of colleagues.

Wertham's literary interests went beyond his own professional bounds, however, as evidenced by his reviews of works by Matthew Josephson, Richard Kluger, Arthur Miller, Norman Vincent Peale, and Richard Wright. He was a tireless public speaker, and during his professional career participated in more than one hundred interviews and delivered almost as many speeches and lectures. Wertham also composed poems and short stories and wrote frequently to newspaper and magazine editors. Included at the end of the Writings series are works by others. Prominent in this group are articles by Wertham's two mentors, Emil Kraepelin and Adolf Meyer, and writings by his longtime friend and associate at the Lafargue Clinic, Hilde Mosse. Of note among the group of poems is an autographed verse by George Bernard Shaw.

The Personal Miscellany series consists of materials relating to Wertham's personal art collection (particularly the paintings by El Lissitzky), biographical information about Hesketh and Wertham, a bibliography of medical books prepared by Wertham in medical school, miscellaneous research materials, and articles and correspondence regarding the Mosaic test, a psychiatric test devised by Wertham. The series also contains productions of this test by various patients.

The Photographs series consists of personal and professional photographs spanning Wertham's career. The first section, images of individuals, is subdivided into photographs of criminals, family members, general subjects, psychiatrists, and Wertham himself. Of particular interest in the general subsection are the autographed pictures of Adolphe Appia and Alan Paton, as well as numerous shots of Wertham with Alfred Hitchcock. The remaining sections include locations, objects, and subjects. The photographs of Wertham at the Lafargue Clinic show the psychiatrist at work with patients and colleagues. Also, the shots from his vacation to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1937, reveal a side of the psychiatrist not usually seen–Wertham in full cowboy regalia, standing on a horse.