Jeffrey Berman

Berman also researched how other memoirists handle the loss of a spouse, particularly by identifying the theme of love and loss in the fictional and nonfiction writings of five memoirists, including C.S. Lewis, and John Bayley. Furthermore, his work, which draws on psychoanalysis, indicated that the memoirists not only paid tribute to their spouses' memories, but also dealt with the terrible feelings associated with losing the person who meant the most to them with writing. Using his personal example, he addressed how, while trying to comprehend his own feelings, he continued to speak about his first wife, Barbara, to his students, and wrote a book about her. This made him disagree with Freud's view on loss and sorrow, according to which mourning must come to a spontaneous end. He believes that everyone has a different foci for love and should not be made to let go. He remarried in 2011.

Berman holds editorial appointments on several journals, including Psyart, and American Imago. He was the Series Editor for Literature and Psychoanalysis for New York University Press from 1991 to 1997. He served on the Editorial Board of SUNY State University of New York Press from 1995 to 2001.

Berman’s works have provided a psychoanalytic perspective on twentieth century novels. In his 1985 book The Talking Cure: Literary Representations of Psychoanalysis, he showed how Philip Roth’s discussion of psychoanalysis in Portnoy’s Complaint and My Life as a Man was based on his own analysis with Hans J. Kleinschmidt, who had written about Roth without permission.

Berman started his academic career at Cornell University as a Teaching Fellow in 1968. This was followed by an appointment as a Lecturer in English. He held an appointment as an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Albany in 1973, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1979, and became a Professor in 1988. As of 2007, he is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the University at Albany, SUNY.

Berman graduated with a B.A. in English literature from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1967. He then enrolled at Cornell University to pursue an M.A. in English literature, and later completed his Ph.D. there in 1971. Subsequently, he became a Research Scholar at the training institute of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis from 1980 until 1983.