John Chynoweth Burnham (1929-2017)

Presents an obituary for John Chynoweth Burhham, who died May 12, 2017. An acknowledged "historian's historian," Burnham's critically acclaimed books and articles dealt prominently with American psychoanalysis, as well as other varied topics including accident proneness, health care in America, bad habits, and the question of "how superstition won and science lost." In his first major book, the 1967 Psychoanalysis and American Medicine, 1894-1918. Burnham approached his controversial subject not from the standpoint of practitioner or partisan, but rather that of an impartial historian placing psychoanalysis within the larger context of American culture and history. Throughout his long career, he continued to emphasize the cultural importance of psychoanalysis in America, most recently by spearheading a "New Freud Studies" movement, intended partly as an antidote to the emotionally overheated "Freud Wars" of the late 1900s. Burnham was named a fellow of APA and winner of the Career Achievement Award by the Society for the History of Psychology in 2009. (PsycINFO Database Record