Alexandra Adler

Alexandra Adler
Julius Wagner-Jauregg's staff in 1927
Born	24 September 1901  Vienna
Died	4 January 2001  (aged 99)
Occupation	Psychiatrist, neurologist

Alexandra Adler (24 September 1901 – 4 January 2001) was an Austrian neurologist and the daughter of psychoanalyst Alfred Adler. She has been described as one of the "leading systematizers and interpreters" of Adlerian psychology. In 1937, Adler and Tracy Jackson Putnam conducted a study on a brain of a multiple sclerosis victim. Illustrations from the study are frequently used in medical literature. Adler's detailed studies on 500 survivors of the Cocoanut Grove fire is noted as some of the earliest research on posttraumatic stress disorder. Adler discovered that many of the survivors suffered from unsettled grief, particular changes in personality such as guilt and diminished vitality, and an increase in sleep disturbances and anxiety. Her sister was Socialist activist Valentine Adler.

Career

Adler completed her medical studies at the University of Vienna in 1926, and then specialized in psychiatry at the University of Vienna Neuropsychiatric Hospital. She emigrated to the United States in 1935, where she worked as a neurology instructor at the Harvard Medical School. In 1946 she joined New York University College of Medicine's psychiatry department, and became a professor there in 1969.