Victor H. Rosen—1911-1973

The death of Victor Rosen, a former President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, on February 5, 1973 at the age of sixty-one, deprived us of a person cherished for his warmth and humanity and admired for his creativity; and a colleague who made many significant contributions to psychoanalysis.

A native of New York, Dr. Rosen was graduated from Columbia University and received his medical degree at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Following his psychiatric training at the Phipps Clinic of the Johns Hopkins Hospital under Adolf Meyer, he served in the Army during World War II and became Chief of the Neuropsychiatric Service of the 98th General Hospital in the European theater. Even among the many exceptional analysts who trained at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute shortly after the war, his brilliance was apparent. He served as Medical Director of the Institute's Treatment Center from 1957 to 1961 and as Chairman of its Educational Committee from 1964 to 1965 when he became President-Elect of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He was Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine from 1967 until 1972 when he joined the Yale faculty with the same academic title.

Dr. Rosen's great interest in language and thought began in college through his fascination with Lewis Carroll and was stimulated by Adolf Meyer who emphasized the importance of symbolic processes in human integration. He became one of the most productive members of the Gifted Adolescents Project led by Ernst Kris: his papers, 'Mathematical Illumination and the Mathematical Thought Process' and 'Some Effects of Artistic Talent on Character Style', were gems that emerged from the study group.

His studies of the creative process led Dr. Rosen back to the study of cognition. He had become increasingly concerned with the deficiencies in psychoanalytic theory, and the confusions in therapy that arose from the relative neglect of the study of lan