In Memory of Harold P. Blum, MD (1929–2024)

Harold Phillip Blum, as anyone who crossed paths with him knows, was a brilliant man, wide-ranging, perceptive, elegant and warm, sociable, loving, family-minded, very generous to younger colleagues and utterly devoted to our field. He died peacefully, of complications after a hip fracture, with his family at his bedside, at age 94. His last words were to his beloved wife of 71 years, Elsa. He said they’d had a great marriage.

Born in 1929, Harold grew up in Brooklyn, New York, the middle child of Yiddish-speaking parents from Eastern Europe, who prized education. Harold did not disappoint. He went early to Cornell University, and there he met his future wife, and married her in 1952. He got his medical degree from Boston University, and after an internship, spent two years in the Navy. In 1957 he moved to Long Island, New York, and went into private practice of psychoanalysis. His analytic training was through Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, in the Psychoanalytic Association of New York. His early promise blossomed. Harold has been the Vice-President of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA); Executive Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives of the Library of Congress (USA); President of the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund of the American Psychoanalytic Association; and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He wrote over 200 papers and 10 books and taught locally, nationally and intercontinentally. In 1976 he was the inaugural winner of the Margaret Mahler Prize for distinguished contributions to child psychoanalysis, and in 1996 he was one of the inaugural winners of the Sigourney Award, a highly prestigious award in the psychoanalytic profession.

He was still valuably contributing in his 90s, as a senior member of the North American Committee of the International Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary (IRED). In each capacity, his leadership has shifted our field in major ways, pushing boundaries towards