Sidney Blatt
| Sidney J. Blatt | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 15, 1928 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | May 11, 2014 (aged 85) Hamden, Conn., U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Psychology |
| Institutions | Yale University |
| Alma mater |
Pennsylvania State University University of Chicago |
| Known for | Two Configurations Approach to Depression, Representational Theory and Adaptive and Maladaptive Personality Development, |
| Influences | Carl Rogers, David Rapaport |
Sidney J. Blatt (October 15, 1928, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – May 11, 2014, Hamden, Connecticut) was a professor emeritus of psychiatry and psychology at Yale University's Department of psychiatry. Blatt was a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist, empirical researcher and personality theoretician, who made enormous contributions to the understanding of personality development and psychopathology. His wide-ranging areas of scholarship and expertise included clinical assessment, psychoanalysis, cognitive schemas, mental representation, psychopathology, depression, schizophrenia, and the therapeutic process, as well as the history of art. During a long and productive academic career, Blatt published 16 books and nearly 250 articles and developed several extensively used assessment procedures. Blatt died on May 11, 2014, in Hamden, Conn. He was 85.
Sidney Blatt was the first of three children in a Jewish family in South Philadelphia. His parents, Harry and Fannie Blatt, owned a sweet shop and the family lived in the apartment upstairs. The family struggled financially, and this markedly shaped Blatt's life experience and ideological convictions. Blatt's first encountered psychoanalytic theory in high school through reading Freud's (1916-1917) Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Fascinated with this book, he became determined to become a psychoanalyst.
After graduating South Philadelphia High School for Boys in 1946, Blatt began his university education at the Pennsylvania State University and, in 1952, completed his master's degree in clinical psychology, working under William Snyder. Blatt received honors for his thesis, Recall and recognition vocabulary: Implications for intellectual deterioration. In 1951, Blatt married his wife Ethel Shames, with whom he has three children (Susan, Judith and David). In 1954, Blatt entered the PhD program in Personality Development and Psychopathology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Morris I. Stein. He completed his dissertation in 1957, An Experimental Study of the Problem Solving Process. His predoctoral internship in clinical psychology was with Carl Rogers, who had a profound influence on Blatt’s psychotherapeutic approach and his identity as a therapist. As a graduate student, Blatt was strongly influenced by the work of David Rapaport, especially his Organization and Pathology of Thought, a volume that Blatt says served as his “intellectual Talmud and Torah” during graduate school.
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