Ruth Cohn

Ruth Charlotte Cohn (born 27 August 1912 in Berlin, died 30 January 2010 in Düsseldorf) was a psychotherapist, educator, and poet. She is best known as the creator of a method for learning in groups called theme-centered interaction (TCI). She was the founder of the Workshop Institute for Living Learning (WILL), which is known today as the Ruth Cohn Institute for TCI.

Early life Ruth Cohn was born as the second child of an assimilated Jewish family in Berlin. Her father, Arthur Hirschfeld, was a banker, her mother Elisabeth, a pianist, came from a merchant family. In 1931/32 she studied economics and psychology at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin. When Hitler came to power in 1933, after disturbing and frightening experiences with National Socialism she fled to Zurich, Switzerland, where she studied psychology and minored in pre-clinical medicine and psychiatrics at the university. In addition, she studied education, theology, literature and philosophy. From 1934 to 1939, she was also trained as a psychoanalyst at the International Society for Psychoanalysis. In 1936, she — like all German Jews living in foreign countries — lost her German citizenship. In 1938, she married Hans-Helmut Cohn, a medical student of German-Jewish heritage.

In 1940, her daughter Heidi Ursula was born. The following year, the family emigrated to the United States. There, she was trained in Early Childhood Progressive Education at the Bank Street School (now Bank Street College of Education) in New York City. From 1941 to 1944, she was trained as a psychotherapist at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology in New York. At Columbia University, she earned her master's degree (M.A.) in psychology, and she became certified as a psychologist. Her son Peter Ronald was born in 1944.