Phyllis Greenacre

Phyllis Greenacre (born 3 May 1894, Chicago, Illinois; died 24 October 1989 Ossining, New York) was an American psychoanalyst and physician who was a supervising and training analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.

Education and life

After taking a BS from Chicago in 1913 and an MD in 1916, Greenacre worked for some years under Adolf Meyer on experimental psychology. During this period she married and divorced her one husband, after having two children with him in 1921-2. She began psychoanalytic training in 1937, and thereafter rose to high prominence within the ranks of the American psychoanalytic establishment, before finally retiring at the age of ninety.

Contributions

In an early publication from 1939, Greenacre explored the role of a severe sense of (unconscious) guilt in fueling surgical addiction. Two years later she published her once controversial but now classic study of childhood anxiety as manifested preverbally.

In the fifties, a study of fetishism in relation to body image launched her at fifty-nine into a two-decade long exploration of aggression, creativity and early childhood development. She also wrote on the family background of the imposter.