Blema Steinberg 1934-2017

Blema Steinberg passed away at the age of eighty-two on 29 January 2017 following a brief illness. Blema was an academic leader and woman ahead of her time. Impressively, she was the first Canadian woman to receive a PhD in political sciences and the first woman in the Political Sciences Department at McGill to become a full professor. Her academic interests were international relations and U.S. foreign policy. She was admired for her academic rigour and adored as a teacher, in addition to her devotion to her students. When walking down the street with Blema, it was not unusual for her former students, even those she had taught many years before, to tell her how much they had enjoyed her classes.

During her midlife, Blema became interested in psychoanalysis and pursued analytic training while continuing to teach political science fulltime. This was particularly impressive since she had no prior clinical experience or background in psychodynamics, but with her keen mind and voracious appetite for learning, she relished the training and graduated in 1988.

After becoming a psychoanalyst Blema developed a course at McGill that combined her interests in psychoanalytic theory and political science. Psychology and Politics became her signature class that she taught until retiring as professor emerita in 2001. Her fascination with personality and politics led her to study and write about the unconscious dynamics, needs, fears, and drives that shape personality and have an impact on politics. A particular area of study was the influence of personality styles, gender, and sibling relationships on the policy decisions of world leaders.

Her first book, Shame and Humiliation, published in 1996, examined the impact of personality, and especially narcissism on the policy decisions of world leaders. Using the era of the Vietnam War, she analyzed personality differences of Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon, and using Kohut's theory