Henry Alden Bunker—1889-1953

With the death of Henry Alden Bunker on March 20, 1953, psychoanalysis lost one of its most distinguished members. His attainments were diversified and in many ways unique. Educated and trained in the best American tradition for medicine and psychiatry, he was capable of mustering his unusual talents effectively as a clinician, teacher and particularly as a writer.

Dr. Bunker was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 3, 1889. His graduation from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School (1915), internships at Boston City and Boston Psychopathic Hospitals, service as a neuropsychiatrist with the U. S. Army in France, and Assistant Directorship of the New York State Psychiatric Institute (1921-26) indicate the range of his experience before he entered the private practice of psychoanalysis in 1921. He became a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society in 1929 and served as its president (1949-51) and as a lecturer of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and chairman of its Library Committee for ten years, a position for which he was eminently fitted by his scholarly interests.

Dr. Bunker's contributions to general psychiatry included twenty articles, seven meticulously executed translations of psychoanalytic books and articles from the German, and several thoughtful book reviews. His original articles on psychoanalytic topics though not numerous are important. But it was in his historical essays that Dr. Bunker's thoroughness and familiarity with the classics emerged most brilliantly. His chapters in One Hundred Years of American Psychiatry on "American Psychiatric Literature During the Past Hundred Years, " and "American Psychiatry as a Specialty" will endure not only for their completeness but for their clarity of presentation. Dr. Bunker never published anything shoddy and had no patience with slovenliness in writing. He possessed a caustic wit which flashed forth with sharp effect because of his extraordinary timing. Perhaps nowhere were his pithy comm