Bertram Cohler

Cohler served on the first steering committee of Division 39 (the Division of Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association. The APA awarded him the Henry A. Murray Award in personality psychology in 2007 and the Theodore Sarbin Award in recognition of distinguished contributions to theoretical and philosophical psychology in 2011. 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. He also lectured at The Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago from 1997 until his death.

In 1974, Cohler was promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, and in 1981 he was made full Professor. He 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. He remained at the University of Chicago for the rest of his career.

During the course of his prolific teaching career Cohler taught in the departments of Human Development, Psychology, Psychiatry and Education, in the Graham School, and in the undergraduate College. Cohler was a strong advocate of undergraduate education at the university. For most of his career he taught in and served as chairman of the year-long Social Sciences core sequence of courses, Self, Culture and Society, in the college. He famously stated "I like all my students to call me by my first name, because we're in seminar together and I want to emphasize that we're all equal before the texts." Cohler won multiple teaching awards, including the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1972 and 1999 and the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for enriching student life in 2006.

In 1969, Cohler became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and began working at the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School. While Bruno Bettelheim was on leave in the early 1970s, Cohler served as director for several months.

Cohler received his A.B. in Human Development from the University of Chicago in 1961. He then studied at Harvard University in the Department of Social Relations, an interdisciplinary collaboration among the departments of psychology, sociology, and anthropology. As a graduate student he assisted with coding and analysis of data from the Six Cultures Study under John and Beatrice Whiting. In 1964-5 he served as a teaching fellow with Gordon Allport for the course, Theories of Personality, and in 1967-9 was a lecturer in clinical psychology and shared responsibility for instruction of psychiatric residents in social psychiatry with Elliot G. Mishler. Among his major influences at Harvard, Cohler counted personality psychologists Gordon Allport and Henry A. Murray, and narrative psychologist Elliott Mishler. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard in 1967. His dissertation was titled "Character, Psychopathology, and Child Rearing Attitudes in Hospitalized and Non-Hospitalized Mothers of Young Children" (committee members: Justin L. Weiss, chair; Arthur S. Couch, Beatrice B. Whiting). Cohler returned to Chicago in 1969, where he trained in child and adult psychoanalysis at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.

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.

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.