Biographical Note: Grete Lehner Bibring was born in Vienna on January 11, 1899. Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s work in psychoanalysis, she became one of the very few women medical students at the University of Vienna in 1918, and one of the first psychiatrists to champion the need to incorporate psychoanalysis into the practice of medicine. She married a member of Freud’s Vienna Psychoanalytic Society Edward Bibring in 1921. Leaving Austria after Nazi’s takeover, they settled in Boston, where Dr. Grete L. Bibring continued her medical career and became a chief of psychiatry at Boston Beth Israel Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School. She served as a president of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and vice president of the International Psycho-Analytical Association. Grete L. Bibring died on August 10, 1977 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Summary: the collection consists of four boxes of drafts and materials for monographs and exhibits, personal notebooks, newspaper clippings, postcards and miscellaneous correspondence. The BPSI Archives also holds eleven tapes of interviews of Dr. Grete L. Bibring, conducted in 1946, 1973, 1974, and 1976 (see Audiovisual Materials). A larger portion of Grete L. Bibring’s archive is located at Countway Medical Library of Harvard University. Henry A. Murray Research Archives holds materials from the Psychological Aspects of Pregnancy, 1957-1962 study led by Grete L. Bibring.
Finding Aid for this collection is available here (viewing it requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).
Related BPSI Collections
Bibring, Edward (1894-1959)
Bibring Photograph Collection
Oral History Interviews
Oral History Transcripts
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society Records, 1922-1994
Related Archives
Grete L. Bibring Papers at Countway Medical Library Archives
Psychological Aspects of Pregnancy, 1957-1962
Harvard Medical School faculty (A-C) portraits, 1861-1998
Lydia M. Gibson Dawes papers at Countway Medical Library Archives
First Stockbridge Congress for Child Analysis, 1950.Countway Medical Library Archives
Related Sites
Psychoanalysis: A Personal View, 3/23/1975. Grete Bibring’s video interview to Oliver Cope, WGBH Archives.
Dr. Grete Lehner Bibring: Changing the Face of Medicine (National Library of Medicine)
Bibring-Lehner, Grete: International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
Grete Bibring: A Culinary Biography (Hanns Sachs Library and Archives publication, 2015)
