Paul Rosenfels

Paul Rosenfels (March 21, 1909 in Chicago – 1985 in New York City) was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Rosenfels is known as one of the first American social scientists to publish about homosexuality as part of the human condition, as opposed to his contemporaries who largely defined homosexuality as an illness or deviation. After leaving the academic field of psychiatry in the 1940s, he developed some of his thinking and a larger philosophy. He published Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process in 1971, along with other books discussing psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

In the 1940s Rosenfels left Chicago and his family, moving to California. He moved to New York City in 1962, where he established a private practice. He devoted himself to developing the foundations of a "science of human nature." In 1973 with Dean Hannotte, he founded the Ninth Street Center in New York City, which provided peer counseling and discussion groups.

Early life and education Paul Rosenfels was born in 1909 into a Jewish family in Oak Park, Illinois. He had an older brother, Richard, an identical twin brother, Walter, and a younger sister, Edith Nash. His mother was politically liberal. She served on the Abraham Lincoln Center Board on the South Side of Chicago. His father, a businessman who supported capitalism, died in 1935. In terms of family dynamics, Edith believed she was the favorite of their father. She said he found the boys difficult to deal with, and Richard was preferred by their mother. They had a son together: Danny.

Professional career Beginning to practice psychiatry, Rosenfels also studied with Franz Alexander, a former student of Sigmund Freud, at the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago. He became licensed as a psychoanalyst.

He served as a Lt. Colonel in the Medical Corps during World War II. After his return, he taught as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago, particularly in psychiatry and law.

Rosenfels rapidly developed a successful private practice and was especially effective in helping women. He lectured at the University of Chicago on psychiatry and the law. After achieving these successes, he became more interested in working to develop larger ideas about human nature, rather than be constrained by details of diagnosis of psychiatric illnesses.

Science of human nature Rosenfels began to feel that he did not belong in the academic fraternity. He was interested in the larger views of philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and David Hume, who held that the most important task for moral philosophers was the founding of a science of human nature. Rosenfels believed that it was insufficient to focus on the physiology of the nervous system and rejected the idea that concepts such as love and power could not be studied by scientific methods.

After serving in the military, Rosenfels accepted a job as Chief Psychiatrist, Reception-Guidance Center of the Department of Corrections, State of California. He had to leave as he did not have a medical license in California. Gay Magazine described Rosenfels as "the Giant of the New Free Gay Culture." Some of his clients in therapy became students of his thinking.

In 1973 he, Dean Hannotte, and their students opened The Ninth Street Center on the Lower East Side, an all-volunteer organization devoted to helping unconventional people live creatively in the world. It initially attracted many young gay men. As the Center slowly matured, its members served a growing community of lesbians, as well as gay men, and straight people. Their clients included people who believed that human potential, in the words of one of their pamphlets, was "too important to leave to professionals."

Works 1962, Love and Power, self-published, Libra Press 1971, Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process, reprinted in 1973, paperback in 1986 1975, The Relationship of Adaptation and Fun and Pleasure to Psychological Growth (Ninth Street Center monograph) 1977, The Nature of Civilization: A Psychological Analysis (Ninth Street Center Monograph) 1979, A Renegade Psychiatrist's Story (Ninth Street Center monograph) 1980, Freud and the Scientific Method (Ninth Street Center monograph) 1987, The Nature of Psychological Maturity (Ninth Street Center monograph)