In Memoriam: Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (1946-2011)

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, author, psychoanalyst, public intellectual, and educator, died earlier this month at her home in Toronto from a pulmonary embolism. She was 65 years old.

Dr. Young-Bruehl served on the faculty at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, for nearly two decades before leaving the academic world to pursue a career as a psychoanalyst. She later taught part-time at Haverford College in Pennsylvania while studying at the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis.

Young-Bruehl was a native of Elkton, Maryland. She attended Sarah Lawrence College but transferred and earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

In her career as an author, she is best known for her biographies of Hannah Arendt and Anna Freud. Her latest book, Childism, was recently released by Yale University Press.