Roy Schafer - Biography

Biography

Roy Schafer was trained at the Menninger Foundation and Austen Riggs Center, then became Chief psychologist in the Yale Medical School Department of Psychiatry (1953-1961), subsequently a staff psychologist for Yale’s health service (1961 – 1976) during which time he was appointed Clinical Professor, and later Training and Supervising Analyst in the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis (1968). He then moved to New York City to become Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University, Medical College (1976 – 1979). In 1979 he established a private practice in New York City and became Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. His early work focused on psychological testing. Melvin Belli called upon him as an expert witness for Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald's killer, whom he diagnosed as suffering organic brain damage that most likely involved psychomotor epilepsy. His first publications were on diagnostic psychological testing and included the very influential Psychoanalytic Interpretation in Rorschach Testing (1954). He later wrote on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in works including Aspects of Internalization (1968), A New Language for Psychoanalysis (1976), The Analytic Attitude (1983), Retelling a Life (1992), The Contemporary Kleinians of London (1997), Bad Feelings (2003), Insight and Interpretation (2003), and Tragic Knots in Psychoanalysis (2009).

He has received many honors, ranging from First Sigmund Freud Memorial Professor University College London (1975-76) to the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award of the International Psychoanalytic Association (2009).