Helen Flanders Dunbar (May 14, 1902 - August 21, 1959) — later known as H. Flanders Dunbar[1] — is an important early figure in U.S. psychosomatic medicine and psychobiology, as well as being an important advocate of physicians and clergy co-operating in their efforts to care for the sick.
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Eldest child of a well-to-do family — her father was the electrical engineer and patent attorney Francis William Dunbar (1868-1939) and her mother was the professional genealogist Edith Vaughn Flanders (1871-1963) — Helen Flanders Dunbar was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 14, 1902.
As a child she suffered from malnutrition; and despite Dunbar's later misleading claims that she had suffered poliomyelitis, and a childhood pediatrician's diagnosis of a muscular form of rickets ("rachitic pseudo-paralysis"), it seems far more likely that she was displaying what was known as "failure to thrive".[2]
A diminutive adult — she was 4'11" (150 cm) — she always wore platform shoes.
She married her first husband Theodor Peter Wolfensberger (1902-1954) in 1932 — he was eventually known in the U.S. as Theodore P. Wolfe — and they were divorced in 1939 (Wolfe arranged for the immigration of Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich in 1939, and was the translator of most of Reich's books and articles).
She married her second husband, economist and editor of The New Republic, George Henry Soule (1888-1970), in 1940. A daughter, Marcia was born in 1942.
Dunbar was taught by private tutors and at private schools. She graduated from Bryn Mawr with a B.A. (dual major in mathematics and psychology) in 1923.[3] She held degrees in theology (B.D. from Union Theological Seminary, where she encountered the psychologist of religion James H. Leuba, in 1927), philosophy (Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1929), and medicine (M.D. from Yale University 1930).
She also trained with Anton Boisen (1876-1965), a co-founder of the Clinical Pastoral Education Movement, at the Worcester State Hospital in the summer of 1925, and in 1929 with both Helene Deutsch and Felix Deutsch in Vienna, and with Carl Jung at the Burghölzli, the psychiatric clinic of Zurich University. In pursuit of more knowledge in relation to the psychic aspects of healing and disease she visited Lourdes and a number of other healing shrines in Germany and Austria.
She was the first Medical Director (1930-1942) of the Council for the Clinical Training of Theological Students in New York City. She was also the Director of the Joint Committee on Religion and Medicine of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America and The New York Academy of Medicine from 1931 to 1936. She was an instructor at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute from 1941 to 1949. She founded the American Psychosomatic Society[1] in 1942, and was the first editor of its journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
On 21 August 1959 Dunbar was found floating face down in her swimming pool; and, although some spoke of suicide, the coroner simply recorded a death by drowning.
Dunbar's life and contributions have been studied and documented by multiple scholars, most notably Robert C. Powell, MD, PhD. Dr. Powell's dissertation, "Healing and Wholeness: Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902-1959) and an Extra-Medical Origin of the American Psychosomatic Movement, 1906-1936" is the most comprehensive manuscript on her work.[4] As a result of the extensive scholarship that Dunbar has received, the College for Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy gives out the annual "Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902-1959) Award for Significant Contributions to the Field of Clinical Pastoral Training” in her honor.[5]