Theodore Cohen, long-time chair of the Vulnerable Child Discussion Group, developed an interest in troubled children very early on. At the age of 16, the young Cohen served as Big Brother to an aggressive 6-year-old boy who had tried to kill another child. At 18, as a college student, Cohen began his research career working with the Jewish Board of Guardians; there he worked with analyst Lawson Lowery and S.R. Slavson, “the father of group therapy,” on effects of that treatment on hyper- and hypoactive children. In 1945, serving with Patton's Third Army, Cohen assisted as a child psychologist in the transport of death camp children from Dachau to a care center in Switzerland.
During medical training at the University of Pennsylvania, Cohen worked with Lauretta Bender at Bellevue studying the thought processes of neurotic, autistic, and brain-damaged children and assessing the effects on them of various types of therapy. Cohen's development was influenced strongly by Edward Strecker, a Catholic psychiatrist instrumental in breaking down exclusionary barriers among medical students at Penn.
After finishing his child psychiatric training, Cohen developed an interest in learning theory. Working at the Frankford Friends School, as part of a long working alliance with Quaker institutions, he was able to predict underachievement in kindergarten children and then followed learning patterns serially from kindergarten to sixth grade, tracing patterns of learning that characterized children with different kinds of problems.
Cohen began analytic training at the age of 30, interrupting his work toward a Ph.D. in cross-cultural psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he had been studying the expressions of mental illness in various societies. After his adult training, Cohen undertook child analytic training and supervision. Gerald Pearson, a pioneer in learning theory, supervised three of his child and adolescent cases. Pearson's classic Psychoanalysis in the Education of the Child was a major influence, as was Cohen's experience in Philadelphia, where the first schools for children with slow neurological development were established. Trained, analyzed, and supervised at both Philadelphia institutes, Cohen recalls that both were of great help to him. He remembers Harold Kolansky in particular. Child analytic training was taken at the Pittsburgh Institute, where Judith Schachter was his classmate.
Apart from his association with the Vulnerable Child Discussion Group, Cohen co-chaired the 1974 meeting of the International Association for Child Psychiatry and Allied Professions, a major organization that includes orthopsychiatry and various adolescent groups. He has been active also in developing the programs for meetings of the World Association for Infant Psychiatry, and served as its first treasurer. Since 1969 he has been an ex officio member of the ACP Program Committee. He has worked for many years on the Executive Committee of the Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Society, and for seven years has been consultant to the Boston school system, where he brings analytic concepts to teachers and counselors.
Since 1981 Cohen has participated in the Kris Study Group in New York. In addition, for the last eleven years he has chaired, and hosted at his Philadelphia home, an ACP study group on the development of narcissism and self-esteem in children. Since 1979 he has been Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical School, which is unique in having a section in Child Analysis. He maintains an analytic practice with 8 to 11 patients, about half of them children.
K. Lynne Moritz