Bertram Cohler
Bertram Joseph Cohler (3 December 1938 – 9 May 2012) was an American psychologist, psychoanalyst, and educator primarily associated with the University of Chicago, the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and Harvard University. He advocated a life course approach to understanding human experience and subjectivity, drawing on insights from psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, personology, psychological anthropology, narrative studies, and the interdisciplinary field of human development. Cohler authored or co-authored over 200 articles and books. He contributed to numerous scholarly fields, including the study of adversity, resilience and coping; mental illness and treatment; family and social relations in normal development and mental illness; and the study of personal narrative in social and historical context. He made particular contributions to the study of sexual identity over the life course, to the psychoanalytic understanding of homosexuality., and to the study of personal narratives of Holocaust survivors. Other than his graduate study at Harvard, Cohler spent his career at the University of Chicago and affiliated institutions, where he was repeatedly recognized as an educator and a builder of bridges across disciplines. He was treated for esophageal cancer in 2011, but became ill from a related pneumonia and died on 9 May 2012 not far from his home in Hyde Park, Chicago. Early life and education Bertram "Bert" Joseph Cohler was born in Chicago on 3 December 1938 to Theresa Belle "Betty" Cohler (née Cahn) and Jonas Robert Cohler. His siblings were Jonas Robert Cohler Jr., and Betsy Cohler. From the age of 10 to 17 years old, he was a student at the Orthogenic School, a residential treatment center for children with emotional disturbances run by Bruno Bettelheim; Bert Cohler lived in the Pirates Dormitory with seven other boys. Dean Robert Hess Koff PhD of Washington University in St. Louis was in the Pirates dorm when Bert arrived. Sandy Lewis, aka Salim Bonnor Lewis, founding managing partner of S B Lewis & Company in Wall Street, now of Lewis Family Farm, Essex, New York, was in the Pirates dorm for one month as Cohler matriculated. Koff and Lewis and numerous other Orthogenic students worked for Bettelheim at The Orthogenic School after graduating. Koff and Lewis were asked by Bettelheim to run The School. Years apart, Lewis and Cohler attended U-High, The Laboratory School of The University of Chicago, while living at The Orthogenic School. Lewis was present and visited with Cohler at The Orthogenic School in the last week of Cohler's tenure as director. Lewis was a donor in support of Bettelheim and in support of the director that followed Cohler, Jacqueline Seevak Sanders PhD. Sanders was a counselor at The School in 1952 when Cohler, Koff and Lewis were enrolled. Barbara A. Lisco was co-counselor with Jacqui Seevak in 1956–1957. In 1960 Lisco married Lewis. In 1963–1964. Lewis became Seevak's co-counselor. Cohler became The School's director as Bettelheim retired the first time, and was celebrated as one of its most successful graduates. Cohler received his A.B. in Human Development from the University of Chicago in