About Elisabeth Geleerd
Elisabeth Rozetta Geleerd Loewenstein (March 20, 1909 – May 25, 1969) was a Dutch-American psychoanalyst. Born to an upper-middle-class family in Rotterdam, Geleerd studied psychoanalysis in Vienna, then London, under Anna Freud. Building a career in the United States, she became one of the nation's major practitioners in child and adolescent psychoanalysis throughout the mid-20th century. Geleerd specialized in the psychoanalysis of psychosis, including schizophrenia, and was an influential writer on psychoanalysis in childhood schizophrenia. She was one of the first writers to consider the concept of borderline personality disorder in childhood. Geleerd was married to fellow psychoanalyst Rudolph Loewenstein from 1946 until her death; they had one child. She developed a reputation as a particularly skilled and empathetic clinician, described as having a "sensitive, searching, and romantic" temperament; she was also regarded as an independent thinker who would present her ideas forcefully even when their topics were sensitive enough for other psychoanalysts to avoid. Living with chronic illness for much of her adult life, Geleerd died at the age of 60 in New York in 1969.
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