Marvin Opler

Marvin Kaufmann Opler (June 13, 1914 in Buffalo, New York – January 3, 1981) was an American anthropologist and social psychiatrist. His brother Morris Edward Opler was also an anthropologist who studied the Southern Athabaskan peoples of North America. Morris and Marvin Opler were the sons of Austrian-born Arthur A. Opler, a merchant, and Fanny Coleman-Hass. Marvin Opler is best known for his work as a principal investigator in the Midtown Community Mental Health Research Study (New York). This landmark study hinted at widespread stresses induced by urban life, as well as contributing to the development of the burgeoning field of social psychiatry in the 1950s.

Marvin Opler attended the University at Buffalo from 1931 to 1934. While there, he was a leader in the University's National Student League. He then transferred to the University of Michigan, attracted by the reputation of the American anthropologist Leslie White. Marvin Opler's admiration of White's work was in contrast to that of his brother Morris Opler. Marvin Opler was interested in the relationships between psychology and anthropology, fields which White had considered connected. Unfortunately, White was beginning to distance himself from the field of psychology at that time.

Marvin Opler was granted an A.B. in social studies from the University of Michigan in 1935. After college, he continued his academic career at Columbia University. There he had the chance to study anthropology under Ruth Benedict and Ralph Linton. At this time, Opler was conducting some of the earliest anthropological fieldwork among the Southern Utes. After completing his dissertation on the acculturation of the Ute and Paiute peoples in Colorado and Utah, he was granted a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1938.

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