The Washington Post, Monday, January 8, 2001
Alexandra Adler - Psychiatrist and Neurologist
Alexandra Adler, 99, a New York, psychiatrist, neurologist, and medical school professor emeritus whose father was the psychiatric pioneer Alfred Adler, died Jan. 4 at a hospital in New York. The cause of death was not reported.
She was a clinical professor emeritus in the psychiatry department of New York University medical school, which she joined in 1945. Over the years, she had served as director of the Alfred Adler Clinic in New York and as president of the International Association of Individual Psychology.
Dr. Adler was a 1936 graduate of the University of Vienna medical school. She conducted work in the areas of alcoholism, juvenile behavior, post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia.
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Associated Press, New York
Dr. Alexandra Adler, a neurologist and psychiatrist who was an expert on brain trauma, died Jan 4. She was 99. Adler followed in the tradition of her father, Alfred Adler, a pioneer of psychoanalytic theory.
She wrote papers on subjects ranging from alcoholism to juvenile delinquency, and she was among the first to write a detailed analysis of post-traumatic stress disorders.
Her study was based from work done with survivors of the Coconut Grove nightclub fire in Boston in 1942 that killed nearly 500 people and she was later able to apply her findings to the treatment of World War II veterans.
Adler was one of the first women to practice neurology in both her native Austria and in the United States. Her work on brain damage, particularly the loss of the ability to read due to brain lesions were widely cited by other in her field.
An expert in schizophrenia, Adler worked with female offenders at the New York City Department of Corrections for 20 years and was medical director of the Alfred Adler Mental Hygiene Clinic in Manhattan.
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New York Times, January 12, 2001
Dr. Alexandra Adler, 99, Expert on Traumas to Brain
By WOLFGANG SAXON
Alexandra Adler, a New York neurologist and psychiatrist who carried on the tradition of her father, Alfred Adler, one of the pioneers of psychoanalytic theory, died Jan. 4 at New York University Hospital. She was 99 and lived in Manhattan.
A native of Vienna, she was among the earliest women to practice as a neurologist there and then in the United States. Her work on brain damage and alexia, the loss of the ability to read because of brain lesions, was often cited by others in the field.
She also wrote papers on psychological subjects ranging from alcoholism to juvenile delinquency. She was among the first to write detailed papers on post-traumatic stress syndrome, reflecting her studies of the surviving victims of the Coconut Grove nightclub fire in Boston in 1942, one of the nation's worst fire disasters.
Besides killing more than 490 people, the blaze left others with permanent brain damage. Dr. Adler studied the anxiety and depression that can follow such catastrophes and later applied her findings to the treatment World War II veterans.
Dr. Adler interpreted Adlerian theories in a book first published in 1938, "Guiding Human Misfits: A Practical Application of Individual Psychology." It went through several editions in the United States and was republished in Germany in 1990.
Dr. Adler received her medical degree in Vienna, where she trained and practiced at the neuropsychiatric clinic of the University of Vienna. At the time, she also started editing the International Journal of Individual Psychology, the branch of psychology her father pioneered after he broke with Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytical emphasis on sex as the root of neurosis.
She came to this country in 1935 to teach and practice at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. She joined the N.Y.U. faculty in 1946 and became a full professor of psychiatry at the its medical school in 1969.
An expert in schizophrenia, she worked at the New York City Department of Correction for 20 years with female offenders and was medical director of the Alfred Adler Mental Hygiene Clinic in Manhattan. She continued to see some patients at her private practice until a few years ago.
She contributed entries to national and international reference works.
In 1959, Dr. Adler married Dr. Halfdan Gregersen, a former dean and professor of Romance languages at Williams College. He died in 1980, and there are no immediate survivors.
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Margo Adler's NPR audio essay on the death of her aunt.
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