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Bertram D. Lewin, co-founder of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly and for many years its editor, died January 8th, 1971, at the age of seventy-four. Of all American psychoanalysts, his teaching, writing, and personality influenced psychoanalysis in this country the most. He was a man of exceptional intellectual gifts and charismatic personality. The combination of these qualities made him unique as psychoanalyst and educator. For him nothing was more exciting than exploring the world of the mind, his own mind as well as that of others. To this discipline he brought the introspective intuition of the poet, the objectivity of the scientist, and the adventuresomeness of the explorer. He enjoyed this quest with a merry wit and infectious enthusiasm throughout his life. Erudite and scholarly, imaginative and creative, a bit of whimsey with a touch of genius—such was Bertram D. Lewin.
He was born in Victoria, Texas on November 30th, 1896, and was graduated from the University of Texas some months before he reached the age of twenty. He received his M.D. degree in 1920 from Johns Hopkins where he continued as a resident in psychiatry at the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic. After further work in Psychiatry and neuropathology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, he left for Berlin to study psychoanalysis at the Berlin Institute. Returning to New York in 1927, he became a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society.
Words, language, and ideas were his natural métier. Fluent in German, French, and Spanish, he also read Russian, Portuguese, Italian, and Swedish. With several of his colleagues he would exchange versified quips and parodies in Latin and other languages. Sometimes he playfully would compose verses and then render them into four additional languages.