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The last of the founder-members of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, Dr. Clarence P. Oberndorf, died on May 30, 1954 of cardiac thrombosis at the age of seventy-two. With him during his terminal illness was his sister Mrs. Ernest Wise Keyser of Atlantic Beach, Florida, with whom he shared a home on West 74th Street and West 12th Street in New York City early in his career. It was in his 74th Street residence that the New York Psychoanalytic Society held some of its meetings in its early days, alternating at that time with the home of the Society's principal founder, Dr. A. A. Brill.
Despite his illness, which first occurred two years ago, Oberndorf continued his private practice as well as consultations at Hillside, Pleasantville, and Mount Sinai Hospital. On May 5, 1954, though ill, he attended Anna Freud's lecture at the New York Academy of Medicine. Unable to participate in the reception tendered her afterward at the Lotos Club, he asked this writer to convey a message of appreciation of her lecture. Though an outspoken opponent of lay analysis, Dr. Oberndorf had great admiration for the brilliant work of the daughter of Professor Sigmund Freud; with him he had undergone a personal analysis for five months in 1921.
From 1859 Clarence Oberndorf's family lived in the South. Migrating to the United States at the age of thirteen, his father, Joseph, had established himself as a prosperous merchant in Selma, Alabama. Like his grandfather who had been a teacher in Bavaria, his father was a respected and studious man, devoted to the reading of Shakespeare in his spare time. Oberndorf's mother, Augusta, was a sister of Oscar Hammerstein, the operatic impressario.