Hedda Bolgar

Hedda Bolgar (August 19, 1909 May 13, 2013) was a psychoanalyst in Los Angeles, California, who maintained an active practice when she was over 100 years old. At age 102, she still saw patients four days a week.

Early life Bolgar was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on August 19, 1909, the only child of Elek Bolgar, a Hungarian historian and diplomat, and Elza Stern, a reporter who was one of the few women to cover World War I.

When Bolgar was 9, her Marxist parents upset her by canceling her birthday party so they could take part in a civil uprising in Hungary. At age 14, Bolgar became a vegetarian. She knew Anna Freud and attended Sigmund Freud's lectures.

In the mid-1930s, Bolgar developed the "Little World Test" (also known as the "Bolgar—Fischer World Test") with her close friend Liselotte Fischer. It was a nonverbal, cross-cultural test similar to the Rorshach Ink Blot Test or the Thematic Apperception Test. At the time of her death, she was likely the oldest active member of the American Psychological Association (APA) and probably the oldest practicing psychoanalyst in the United States. "The day the Nazis came to Vienna, I left. I had been very active in anti-Nazi politics and it really wasn't safe for me to stay. They came in on a Sunday and I decided Sunday was a good time to leave because on Monday they'd start working. They'd probably find the person who wrote those terrible articles about them pretty quickly." "Women must be agents of their own lives. They must not be dependent on someone else to provide for them."