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Bela Mittelmann, the son of a physician, was born in Budapest, Hungary, on October 2, 1899. He obtained his matura in a Budapest Gymnasium and graduated from the Medical School of the German University of Prague in 1922. He did postgraduate work in internal medicine and neurology in Berlin, working at the Neurological Clinic of the famous neurologist, Ernst Cassirer.
In 1923 he emigrated to the United States where he had relatives; a year later, a sister, who was also a physician, joined him. Remaining in general practice for the subsequent ten years, in 1932 he began to do special work in neurology, endocrinology, and psychiatry. At various intervals he was connected with the psychiatric division of Believue Hospital, with the New York Post-Graduate Hospital, in its medical and later its neurological and psychiatric departments.
He showed an early interest in psychosomatic problems related to the emotional factors in the endocrinological and vascular syndromes. A number of papers testify to this concern. It was as a result of this interest that he undertook psychoanalytic training at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. His interest in psychosomatic problems led to his studies of the relationships between the emotions and the gastroduodenal functions, which he undertook with H. G. Wolff. Together, they also studied temperature-skin reactions in patients during the psychoanalytic interview. He was a lecturer at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute from 1941 to 1944. With the founding of the Columbia psychoanalytic group he became a charter member and was a training analyst until his last days.
During the war he collaborated in developing the Cornell Selectee Index. Psychoanalytic and psychosomatic problems occupied him intensely during