Introduction

Spotnitz Archives

In 2010 the family of Hyman Spotnitz donated his papers to CMPS. The Hyman Spotnitz Archives include materials from his years of medical study in Berlin, his research in neurology and psychiatry in New York, and his research and writings in group and individual psychoanalysis.

Access and Use
The Hyman Spotnitz Archives are available for use by CMPS scholars and by outside researchers.  Use of the Archives materials is after application approval and by appointment only.  Specific materials will be retrieved after the researcher identifies them using the finding aid.

Requests for information made by 
Mail: CMPS; 16 West 10th Street; New York, NY 10011
Email, librarian@cmps.edu
Phone, 212 260-7050
will be handled as time permits and in the order received.

A Brief Biography
Hyman Spotnitz (1908-2007) was a neurologist and psychiatrist who was also trained in Freudian psychoanalysis. While doing research on schizophrenia in the 1940's, he used the psychoanalytic method successfully with a patient at the NY Psychiatric Institute, reversing her illness. During his years as a consulting and supervising psychiatrist at the Jewish Board of Guardians (1944-1954) he developed a specific theory of technique for the treatment of narcissistic disorders. Concurrently he pioneered a new modality, psychoanalytic group psychotherapy.  Because his therapeutic approach proved so effective in treating preoedipal conditions, it gained him a large number of adherents and disciples in the years that followed.  In 1971, a group of psychoanalysts trained in his methods established what is today the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies --an institute that would train aspiring analysts in the methods of Modern Psychoanalysis, the name given to his Freudian-based clinical school of thought.  Many other modern analytic schools followed: The Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, the Center for Group Study, the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis, the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis, the Kentucky Psychoanalytic Institute, and other associations and formal study groups.