Background
Doctor Robert Wallerstein (1921-2014) played a central role in the local, national, and international psychoanalytic communities.
He was president of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1971-1972) and the International Psychoanalytical Association
(1985-1989). Having received his training at Columbia College, then Columbia University College of Physicians (1941-1944)
and subsequently holding residency at Mount Sinai and the Menninger School of Physicians in the late 1940s, Wallerstein participated
in over half a century of history in the field of psychoanalysis. A leading figure in the San Francisco psychoanalytic community,
Wallerstein served as Chief of Psychiatry at the Mount Zion Hospital, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the UCSF
School of Medicine, and Director of the Langley Porter Institute. He also wrote 20 books and over 400 scholarly articles.
His papers are of specific relevance to the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis due to his role as a training and supervising
analyst there during the later part of the 20th century.