Abram Kardiner, American physician, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and psychocultural theorist, was born in New York City on August 17, 1891, and died in Easton, Connecticut on July 20, 1981.

Born in New York City's Lower East Side of immigrant parents, he suffered early loss and privation, his mother dying when he was only a few years old. But given his ambition and many intellectual gifts, he acquired an excellent education, graduating first from the City College of New York, and then from Cornell Medical School in 1917. He interned at Mount Sinai Hospital for two years and did his psychiatric residency at Manhattan State Hospital on Ward's Island. After completing his residency, at the urging of Dr. Horace Westerlake Frink, Kardiner sought analysis with Sigmund Freud and was accepted as a student-patient (1921-1922). Freud set two limitations to that analysis: that it not extend past six months, and that the fee per session...