Robert Spitzer (psychiatrist)
| Robert Spitzer | |
|---|---|
| Born | Robert Leopold Spitzer May 22, 1932 White Plains, New York, U.S. |
| Died | December 25, 2015 (aged 83) Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | psychiatry |
| Institutions | Columbia University |
| Alma mater |
Cornell University (B.A.), New York University School of Medicine (M.D.) |
| Known for | his work on modernizing classification of mental disorders, recognizing homosexuality as a non-mental disorder |
| Influences | Wilhelm Reich |
| Spouse | Janet Williams (?-2015; his death) |
Robert Leopold Spitzer (May 22, 1932 – December 25, 2015) was a psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City. He was a major force in the development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
Spitzer was born in White Plains, New York, in 1932.
He received his bachelor's degree in psychology from Cornell University in 1953 and his M.D. from New York University School of Medicine in 1957. He completed his psychiatric residency at New York State Psychiatric Institute in 1961 and graduated from Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in 1966.
Spitzer wrote an article on Wilhelm Reich's theories in 1953 which the American Journal of Psychiatry declined to publish.
Spitzer spent most of his career at Columbia University in New York City as a Professor of Psychiatry until he retired in 2003. He was on the research faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research where he retired after 49 years in December 2010. He has been called one of the most influential psychiatrists of the 20th century. The Lancet's obituary described him as "Stubborn, sometimes abrasive, and always eager, Spitzer's work was guided by a strong sense of ethical fairness". A colleague at Columbia has described him as an "iconoclast" who "looked for injustice".
Spitzer was a major architect of the modern classification of mental disorders. In 1968, he co-developed a computer program, Diagno I, based on a logical decision tree, that could derive a diagnosis from the scores on a Psychiatric Status Schedule which he co-published in 1970 and that the United States Steering Committee for the United States–United Kingdom Diagnostic Project used to check the consistency of its results.
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