Background
Greenwald was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the son of Abraham Greenwald, a barber, and his wife, Lillian, who were refugees from Czarist Russia.
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Harold Greenwald
Edit ProfileEducation
Harold Greenwald graduated from the City College of New York in 1933, and worked for the New York City Housing Authority and city planning board.
Career
He was a civilian instructor for the United States. Army Air Forces during World World War World War II
Greenwald turned to the study of psychology while in his 40s, and in 1956 earned a doctorate from Columbia University. He became prominent among psychoanalysts circles as a leading student of Theodore Reik, a disciple of Sigmund Freud. He became president of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, which promotes Freudian therapy, early in his career.
However, Greenwald chafed at the long periods of quiet listening required in Freudian psychoanalysis, so he developed direct decision therapy.
He believed that decisions were at the root of understanding dysfunctional behavior and personality disorders, and that people are free to change their decisions as they go through life. He even believed that happiness "could be made as a decision."
He said in a 1984 interview that "people who live on the East Coast seem to think it makes you more superficial to be happy.
lieutenant"s scary to be happy. Some people think that if you"re happy, other people will hate you" and make demands.
In the 1950s, Greenwald carried out work for a doctoral dissertation on the psychology of prostitutes.
He interviewed 16 prostitutes, of whom six were in analysis with him, with the other ten interviewed by three of the other prostitutes who were his patients. His dissertation, published in 1958 as The Call Girl: A Social and Analytic Study made the woman seem human and delved into why they made their particular career choice. He explained in the book that most came from unhappy childhoods and suffered from insufficient parental love.
Greenwald"s research found that prostitutes utilized defense mechanisms to cope with their profession, which included masochism, and denying to themselves that they were having sexual
The book became a best seller, translated into seven languages and selling more than a million copies. lieutenant was adapted into the 1960 film Girl of the Night, starring Anne Francis and featuring Lloyd Nolan as psychotherapist.
Greenwald became a popular speaker at psychological gatherings a result of the book In 1970, a new edition of the book was published, titled The Elegant Prostitute.
The book was retitled to emphasize how call girls were better looking and more refined than their "street walking" counterparts.
Greenwald taught at Hofstra University, and was a Visiting Fulbright Fellow at the University of Bergen in Norway. He became a distinguished professor at the United States International University, and served as president of the Academy of Psychologists in Marital and Family Therapy. He was president of the division of Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association.
Achievements
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Born
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Died
March 26, 1999 (aged 88) -
Nationality
United States