Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl (March 3, 1946 – December 1, 2011), born Elisabeth Bulkley Young, was an American academic and psychotherapist, who from 2007 until her death had resided in Toronto, Canada. She published a wide range of books, most notably biographies of Hannah Arendt and Anna Freud. Her 1982 biography of Hannah Arendt won the first Harcourt Award while The Anatomy of Prejudices won the Association of American Publishers' prize for Best Book in Psychology in 1996. She was a member of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and co-founder of Caversham Productions, a company that makes psychoanalytic educational materials.

Life

Young-Bruehl’s family on her mother's side ran a dairy farm on land near the head of Chesapeake Bay, and were active in local Maryland politics. Her mother's father and grandfather (a newspaper editor) had been amateur scholars with a large private library. Her maternal grandmother was a Mayflower descendant, part of the Hooker and Bulkley families of Connecticut. Her father's family were Virginians, several trained in Theology at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, where the family home, the Maupin-Dixon House, is located. She grew up in Maryland and Delaware, where her father worked as a teaching golf pro.