Paul Rosenfels
| Paul Rosenfels | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 21, 1909 |
| Died | 1985 New York |
| Fields | psychology, science of human nature |
| Institutions | American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago |
| Known for | psychological polarity, character specialization, introversion, extroversion, femininity, masculinity |
Paul Rosenfels (March 21, 1909, Chicago – 1985, New York) was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known as one of the first American social scientists to publish about homosexuality as part of the human condition, rather than defining it as an illness or deviation. After leaving the academic field of psychiatry in the 1940s, he developed some of his own thinking and a larger philosophy. He published Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process in 1971, and other books about his arguments with psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
In the 1940s Rosenfels left Chicago and his family, moving to California. He moved to New York City in 1962, where he established a private practice. He devoted himself to developing the foundations of a "science of human nature." In 1973 with Dean Hannotte, he founded the Ninth Street Center in New York City, which provided peer counseling and discussion groups.
Paul Rosenfels was born in 1909 into a Jewish family in Oak Park, Illinois. He had an older brother Richard, an identical twin brother Walter, and younger sister Edith. Their mother was politically liberal; for years she was on the Abraham Lincoln Center Board on the South Side of Chicago. Their father, a businessman who supported capitalism, died in 1935. In terms of family dynamics, Edith believed she was the favorite of their father; she said he found the boys difficult to deal with, and Richard was preferred by their mother. Richard earned a PhD in botany; Paul became a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and Walter worked in ad copywriting, where he had more flexibility.
As they grew up, the three brothers realized they were homosexual, but never discussed it openly with their parents. Only Paul among the brothers married and had a child. Edith married, became an educator and poet, and had two children.
Rosenfels' first passion was history, and in high school he drafted a book on the causes of war. In college he met Harold D. Lasswell, who told him that new insights into the psychology of war and the politicians who cause them would in the future be provided by the new science of psychoanalysis. Convinced that this tool could help him make an important contribution to the welfare of humanity, Rosenfels spent the next decade doing undergraduate work at University of Chicago and earning an M.D. at Rush Medical College; he became board-certified as a psychiatrist.
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