Jane Kessler
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
March 9, 1921
Jane Kessler | |
|---|---|
.webp) Kessler in 1976 | |
| Born | Elizabeth Jane Wilson March 9, 1921 |
| Died | July 21, 2025 (aged 104) |
| Alma mater | Columbia University Case Western Reserve University |
| Occupation | Psychologist |
| Spouse |
Morris M. Kessler
(m. 1947; died. 1973) |
Elizabeth Jane (Wilson) Kessler (March 9, 1921[1] – July 21, 2025) was an American psychologist and educator. She was a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychotherapist and university professor.
Elizabeth Jane Wilson was born in Beverly, Massachusetts,[1] the daughter of Dustin Wilson, a chemical engineer; and Mary Elizabeth (Nelson) Wilson, a homemaker from Salem, Massachusetts.[2]
She attended Scarsdale High School in Scarsdale, New York, graduating in 1937. She began college at age 16, earning her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan.[2][3] She subsequently attended Columbia University, earning her master's degree in psychology in 1943, and then served in the United States Navy[2] in the WAVES from 1943 to 1946.[3] After her discharge, she attended Case Western Reserve University, earning her PhD degree in clinical psychology in 1951.[3]
Career
While serving in the US Navy, Kessler conducted psychological evaluations in San Diego, California.[4] Her rank ended as a lieutenant, junior grade.[2] After she earned her doctorate in Cleveland, she became the first-ever staff psychologist at University Hospitals.[2]
Her career also included private practice (psychotherapy as well as psychonanalysis),[1] consulting, and especially as a professor in the department of psychology at her alma mater Case Western Reserve University — from 1958 to 1993.[5][6][4] She began working at the school as the teaching assistant to Dr. Benjamin Spock, often filling in to deliver class lectures when his fame took him away from classroom duties.[2] Beginning in 1958, she organized and became director of the Mental Development Center,[3] an interdisciplinary clinical facility at the university that evaluated and treated developmental disabilities of children.[2]
Dr. Kessler wrote a definitive book for its time, Psychopathology of Childhood (1966), published by Prentice Hall; "the most widely taught graduate text in that field."[2] A second edition was published in 1988.[7]
In 1976, she was named the Lucy Adams Leffingwell Distinguished Professor.[8] She was president of the American Orthopsychiatric Association (1978–1979). She had already been a fellow of the organization and chairperson of the Council on Child and Youth Issues, and a fellow for the American Psychological Association and the American Association for Mental Deficiency, having served as the president of its Ohio chapter.[3] She had been president of the Ohio Psychological Association and wrote advisory articles for the PTA.[3]
She retired from Case Western Reserve in 1993.[4] However, as the proprietor of Appletree Books in nearby Cleveland Heights, Ohio, she continued to work.[4]
