RUTH STEIN, Ph.D.

The entire psychoanalytic community was shocked and saddened at the news of Dr. Ruth Stein’ssudden death in NYC on January 17, 2010. Dr. Stein had been attending APsaA’s 2010 NationalMeeting at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC, where she was awarded the JAPA Prize for herpaper, “The Otherness of Sexuality: Excess”, first published in JAPA in 2008. Tragically, shesuffered a massive stroke shortly after she received this honor. At the end of one of the sessions,she suddenly lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital. She died two days later.

Dr. Stein had been a member of IPTAR and was on their faculty. In addition, she was a trainingand supervising analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society (IPS) and was also was on theAdvisory Board of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy(IARPP) and on the faculty of the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity (IPSS).Dr. Stein was a Clinical Associate Professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program for Psychotherapyand Psychoanalysis, Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, International Editor of Studiesin Gender and Sexuality, and on the Editorial Board of several other journals. Her book,Psychoanalytic Theories of Affect, was published in 1991 and was reprinted by Karnac in 1999.A second book, For Love of the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Religious Terrorism, was published in 2009. She also wrote numerous articles on affects, sexuality, perversion,fundamentalism, terrorism, brainwashing, and the philosophy of psychoanalysis.

Ruth Stein was born in Linz, Austria on June 3, 1947. Her father had been a brilliant rabbi andTalmudic scholar, who spent three years in Auschwitz, and lost his first wife and three childrenduring the Holocaust. With his new family, he immigrated to Israel. Ruth was only four at thetime. She grew up in Israel and later spent four years in Iran, where her father worked as anIsraeli representative during the Shah’s period. At age 19 she married her first husband and hadthree children: Dolly, Bitti and Yoav. By the late 1960s, she completed her undergraduatestudies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, majoring first in French Literature, and later inPsychology. She subsequently pursued an M.A. in Clinical Psychology inthe early 1970s at thesame university. Following her first analysis was with Erich Gumbel (one of the pioneers ofpsychoanalysis in Israel).

During the 1980s, Dr. Stein pursued doctoral studies under Joseph Sandler. Herdoctoral dissertation, a critical evaluation of affect theories in psychoanalysis, was submitted in1988, accepted Summa cum Laude, and formed the basis of her first book. She also went througha second analysis and went into psychoanalytic training at the Israel Psychoanalytic Institute,graduating in 1992. In 1997 she became a training analyst, and started teaching at the Institute.She also joined the faculty of the Tel Aviv University Postgraduate Program in Psychotherapy.

In 2001, Dr. Stein married Gavriel (Ben-Ephraim) Reisner, a lecturer in English Literature, andthey moved to NYC, where she became an Associate Professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Programin Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and a faculty member of IPTAR, practiced psychoanalysis6and psychotherapy, and taught and supervised in several additional programs. She was a memberof the IARPP Advisory Council from its first day, and had recently consented to be a candidate tothe IARPP Board. She presented her work in most IARPP conferences, as well as in many IPAcongresses, and in numerous psychoanalytic centers all around the world. She was a member ofthe US Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and served as anAssociate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Her papers were published often in both journals,as well as in Studies in Gender and Sexuality and elsewhere.

Following 9/11 Dr. Stein became deeply interested in the study of fundamentalism, usingMohamed Atta’s letter to explore the motivations of his group. This interest culminated in hermost recent book, which received high critical praise.

Dr. Stein is remembered as a “warm”, “passionate”, “funny” and “good-hearted” human being, a“formidable intellect” and a “deeply caring psychoanalyst”. She will be truly missed.

A full essay in honor of Ruth was written by Emanuel Berman & Rina Lazar for theIARPP newsletter.