The Life of Gregory Zilboorg 1890-1940: Psyche, Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, 283pp/The Life of Gregory Zilboorg 1940-1959: Mind Medicine and Man By Caroline Zilboorg. London/New York:  Routledge, 2022.  282 pp.

According to his first wife Ray Liebow, Gregory Zilboorg managed to “elude all who loved him” (p. 265). Zilboorg’s daughter Caroline, however, has a very different opinion. In her detailed and fascinating two-volume biography, she portrays her father as a loving husband to her mother (Gregory Zilboorg’s second and much-younger second wife, Margaret Stone) and a devoted father. She admits that he was a “challenging human being…difficult, egoistic and domineering” (p.xx). He was ethically compromised as well (Leffert, Weber, Mosher, Berman1). Zilboorg could be generous toward others but rarely neglected himself. “I try not to deny myself most of the things I desire…. If I want to go to the theatre I go. If I want a suit–-I get one; if I want a book–-I buy it” (p. 23).

As Caroline ably tells us, her father was a man of huge talents, endless energy, and large contradictions: at once “protectively private” (p. xx) and very public; a devoted left winger who insisted on traveling first class with fourteen pieces of luggage; and impolitic with others while needing their adoration. Born a Jew, he became a member of the Society of Friends, only later to convert to Catholicism. Grandiose, narcissistic, easy-to-anger, and at times intimidating, Zilboorg could also be a good friend, as he was to Henry Sigerist, the noted Swiss medical historian. It is extremely difficult, but can one try to forgive him his many flaws–-as Caroline seems to–-because he is so intelligent creative, lively, and knowledgeable?

Zilboorg could and did deliver lectures in Russian, German, French, and heavily accented English in Europe, South America, and the United States. He published on a variety of topics: schizophrenia (, );

forensic psychiatry (, ); social p