Bertram Joseph Cohler was an American psychologist, psychoanalyst, and educator primarily associated with the University of Chicago, the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and Harvard University.
23 Facts About Bertram Cohler
1.
2.
Bertram Cohler 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.
3.
Bertram Cohler 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.
4.
Bertram Cohler 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.
5.
Bertram "Bert" Joseph Cohler was born in Chicago on 3 December 1938 to Theresa Belle "Betty" Cohler and Jonas Robert Cohler.
6.
Years apart, Lewis and Bertram Cohler attended U-High, The Laboratory School of The University of Chicago, while living at The Orthogenic School.
7.
Bertram Cohler became The School's director as Bettelheim retired the first time, and was celebrated as one of its most successful graduates.
8.
Bertram Cohler then studied at Harvard University in the Department of Social Relations, an interdisciplinary collaboration among the departments of psychology, sociology, and anthropology.
9.
Bertram Cohler's dissertation was titled "Character, Psychopathology, and Child Rearing Attitudes in Hospitalized and Non-Hospitalized Mothers of Young Children".
10.
Bertram Cohler returned to Chicago in 1969, where he trained in child and adult psychoanalysis at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.
11.
In 1969, Bertram Cohler became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and began working at the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School.
12.
In 1974, Bertram Cohler was promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, and in 1981 he was made full Professor.
13.
Bertram Cohler was named William Rainey Harper Professor in Comparative Human Development and the college, with affiliations in the Department of Comparative Human Development, the Department of Psychology, and the Department of Psychiatry.
14.
Bertram Cohler remained at the University of Chicago for the rest of his career.
15.
Bertram Cohler was a strong advocate of undergraduate education at the university.
16.
Bertram Cohler was a practicing clinical psychologist and certified in psychoanalysis by the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.
17.
Bertram Cohler provided pro bono psychotherapy in private practice and through the Center on Halsted.
18.
Bertram Cohler served on the first steering committee of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association.
19.
Bertram Cohler was on the faculty of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1991 until his death and taught in the Core Psychoanalytic Education Program, the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Program and in the Teacher Education Program.
20.
Bertram Cohler lectured at Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago from 1997 until his death.
21.
Bertram Cohler made significant contributions across social science disciplines, bringing together ideas from life-course perspectives on human development with psychoanalytic theory and narrative psychology and the personological study of lives.
22.
Bertram Cohler worked extensively on narrative analysis, informed by psychoanalytic insights, of the memoirs of men and women who were internees in the extermination camps of the Third Reich, and written at some point in the post-war period.
23.
Bertram Cohler looked at the manner in which history and social change influenced how these life writers portrayed their experiences before, during, and following the terrible experiences in Auschwitz and other death camps.