Roy Schafer (1922-2018)

This article memorializes Roy Schafer (1922-2018). Schafer was a major theoretician of psychoanalysis. He began his long professional life in the famous Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, conducting psychological diagnostic research. Early on he became known for foundational work on the Rorschach test. Schafer pursued traditional ego psychology in the then-new Western New England Institute of Psychoanalysis in New Haven, Connecticut, where he became a Training Analyst. He was the Chief Psychologist in Yale Department of Psychiatry (1953- 1961), and later worked with Yale students in the health services (1961-1976). In 1975-1976, he became the first Sigmund Freud Memorial Professor at University College London. Returning to New York, he wrote about, taught, and supervised analysts at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Also a Clinical Professor at Weill Cornell Medical College, he left that post in 1979 to establish an independent practice. Due to his ongoing developmental interests and his experiences in London, he began to bridge American classical ego psychology with contemporary Kleinian thinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).