Elizabeth R. Zetzel

Dr Elizabeth Rosenberg Zetzel, a Vice-President of the International Psycho-Analytical Association, died unexpectedly in her sleep on 22 November 1970, at the age of 63, while visiting at the home of her mother in Scarsdale, New York. At a Memorial Service held a week later at the Memorial Chapel of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the President of the Association was invited to join several other friends, colleagues, and members of the family in speaking in her memory, and in paying honour to what she stood for. The message I delivered on that occasion is presented below as the obituary for Dr Zetzel in this Journal. In order, however, to make clear several of the references alluded to, I would like to add the following brief supplementary data.

Born in New York City, Dr Zetzel's life-time characteristic, of brilliant intellectual achievements harnessed to the service of humanistic pursuits, followed her family tradition. Her father, James N. Rosenberg, whose death at the age of 95 preceded hers by just four months, was a distinguished jurist, philanthropist, humanist, and later artist. In 1921 he had served under Herbert Hoover on the American Relief Administration, and in 1947 headed a United States Committee for the passage of the Genocide Convention at the United Nations. He was Honorary Chairman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee of which he had headed a special mission for European relief after World War I. At the age of 62 he had turned to art as a full-time career and had achieved a creditable standing in the art world at the time of his death.

About one-third of Dr Zetzel's six decades was spent in and around New York during her early schooling and development, another third in London during her professional training and early practice which included service as a Major in the British Army, and the last third in Boston as a practising, teaching, and scientifically contributing psychoanalyst. In each phase, during her un