Hilde Bruch

Hilde Bruch (March 11, 1904 - December 15, 1984) was a German-born American psychoanalyst, known foremost for her work on eating disorders and obesity.

Bruch emigrated to the United States in 1934. She worked and studied at various medical facilities in New York and Baltimore before becoming a professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1964.

In 1973 she published her seminal work Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Person Within. This book was based on observations and treatments of eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, over several decades. In 1978 she published The Golden Cage: the Enigma of Anorexia Nervosa, a distillation of Eating Disorders aimed at the lay reader. Her other works include Don't Be Afraid of Your Child (1952), The Importance of Overweight (1957), and Learning Psychotherapy: Rationale and Ground Rules (1974). A final work,Conversations with Anorexics (1988) was published posthumously.

Early life

Hilde Bruch was born in the small German town of Dülken, on the Lower Rhine near the Dutch border, She was the third of seven children, with four brothers and two sisters. Her parents, Hirsch and Adele (Rath) Bruch were members of the local Jewish community.