Peter B. Neubauer

Peter Bela Neubauer
Born (1913-07-05)July 5, 1913
Krems an der Donau, Austria
Died February 15, 2008(2008-02-15) (aged 94)
New York City, United States
Residence United States
Nationality Austrian
Alma mater University of Vienna, University of Bern
Scientific career
Fields Child psychiatry
Institutions Bellevue Hospital, New York University, Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services
Influences Anna Freud

Peter Bela Neubauer (July 5, 1913 – February 15, 2008) was an Austrian-born American child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

Life

His was one of a small number of Jewish families in Krems an der Donau, Austria, where he was born on July 5, 1913. Neubauer received his medical training at the University of Vienna and the University of Bern, in Switzerland, to which he escaped during the Nazi control of Austria. He completed his psychiatric training in Bern in 1941.

Neubauer died in New York City on February 15, 2008, at the age of 94.[1]

Career

Neubauer emigrated to New York in 1941,[1] where he took a position on the staff of Bellevue Hospital.

In an early influential paper, "The One-Parent Child and His Oedipal Development" (1960), Neubauer indicated that a father's absence could jeopardize child development as seriously as maternal deprivation.[2] He worked closely with Anna Freud at the Hampstead Clinic in London, and from the 1970s to his death, Neubauer was a co-editor of "The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child", an annual publication of Yale University. He was one of the first to study the emotional impact on children witnessing violence in television and film.[1]

Neubauer's published books include Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality,[3] which includes some discussion of his controversial long-term study of adoptive Jewish twins (five sets) and triplets (one set) separated during infancy. Neither the children nor their adoptive parents were aware of the real reason they were all being studied or that the children had identical siblings.[4][5] Some of the twins eventually learned that their separation had been deliberate as a "nature versus nurture" experiment by Neubauer. These revelations led to controversy, anger, and ethical comparisons with notorious twin experiments by the same Nazi regime that Neubauer had escaped.[6] Some of the subjects of Neubauer's twin study are seeking records, apologies and compensation from the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, which sponsored the study with additional funding from the National Institute of Mental Health.[7] At least three of the separated siblings apparently committed suicide.[5] The experiment was discussed in the 2007 memoir Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein, as well as the documentary films The Twinning Reaction (2017)[5][8] and Three Identical Strangers (2018).[9] According to NPR, at the conclusion of the study in 1980, Neubauer feared that public opinion would be against the study and declined to publish it. The records of the study are sealed at the Yale University Library until 2066.[10]

Neubauer served as Director of the Jewish Board's Child Development Center, President of the Association for Child Psychoanalysis,[1] Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at New York University, and Secretary General of the International Association of Child Psychiatry and Allied Professions.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Pearce, Jeremy (March 3, 2008). "Peter B. Neubauer, 94, Noted Child Psychiatrist, Is Dead". New York Times.
  2. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 15 (1960): 286, 287, 293, 295, 297, 298, 299, 302, 303, 305, 308.
  3. Neubauer, Peter B.; Neubauer, Alexander (1990). Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality. Addison Wesley. ISBN 9780201092547.
  4. Saul, Stephanie (January 31, 1998) [First published October 18, 1997]. "Separated Triplets Had Been Studied Since Birth". Newsday via Greensboro News & Record.
  5. 1 2 3 "Twins make astonishing discovery that they were separated shortly after birth and then part of a secret study". ABC News. March 9, 2018.
  6. Kardon, Gabrielle (March 16, 2018). "Life in triplicate". Science. 359 (6381): 1222. doi:10.1126/science.aat0954. The irony of a Jewish researcher and a Jewish adoption agency conducting a twin study after the atrocities waged against Jewish people in Nazi Germany is clear.
  7. Kenny, Ruth (February 5, 2018). "The Sinister True Story of the Triplets Separated at Birth as Part of Cruel Social Experiment". Oddity Central.
  8. The Twinning Reaction: Official Site. Retrieved July 22, 2018
  9. "A Sundance film about adoption hurls questions at a well-known charity". Washington Post. January 28, 2018.
  10. Beresford, Jane (December 31, 2007). "Twins reunited, after 35 years apart". BBC News.
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