Bertram J. Cohler
My current interests include sexuality and society, and the study of coping with adversity. In addition, as a psychoanalyst, my interests include the use of clinical psychoanalytic concepts in the study of lives over time. In each of these areas of my present work, I focus on the interplay of social and personal factors. The study of sexuality and identity in contemporary society makes use of memoirs, journals and blogs in concern with the manner in which social and historical change influences narratives of sexual orientation across historical generations and in different places. Study of the manner in which we make meanings of misfortune has also relied upon narratives including, in my present work, memoirs of men and women who were internees in the extermination camps of the Third Reich and written at some point in the post-war period. Again, I am concerned with the manner in which history and social change influences the manner in which these life writers have portrayed their experiences before, during, and following the terrible misfortune suffered in Auschwitz and other death camps. Clinical psychoanalytic perspectives additionally inform this study of making meaning of adversity.
Contact Information
bert@uchicago.edu
Conference Papers
Emerging Adulthood in Time and Place: Life-Course and Life-Story in Inter-War Eastern Europe
Narrating the Past: History and Collective Remembrance in Life Writing after the Shoah
Relevant Recent Publications
Cohler, B. "Life-course social science perspectives on the LGBT family." Journal of LGBT Family Studies, 1, 69-96. Reprinted in J. Bigner (Ed.). An introduction to GLBT family studies. New York: Haworth Press, 23-5.
Cohler, B., Hammack, P. (2006). "Making a gay identity: Life-story and the construction of a coherent self." In. D.P. McAdams, R. Josselson and A.Lieblich (Eds). Identity and story: Crafting self in narrative. Washington DC: The American Psychological Association, 151-17.
Cohler B., Galatzer-Levy, R. (2006). Love in the classroom: Desire and transference in teaching and learning. In. Boldt, G.M., Salvo, P.M. (Eds.) Love's return: Psychoanalytic essays on teaching and learning. New York: Routledge, 243-26.
Cohler, B., Smith, G. (2006). Cultural dilemmas of masculinity. In. Bedford, V.H. and B.F. Turner (Eds.) Men in relationships: A new look from a life-course perspective. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 3-2.
Cohler, B., Hammack, P. (2006). The psychological world of the gay teenager: Social change and the issue of "Normality," The Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 36, 47-5.
Cohler, B., Hostetler, A. (2007). Gay lives in the third age. In. P. Wink and J. James (Eds.) The crown of life: Dynamics of the early post-retirement period. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 263-28.
Cohler, B.(2007). Writing desire: Sixty years of gay autobiography. University of Wisconsin Press (Lambda Literary Award Finalist, 2008.)
Cohler, B., Galatzer-Levy, R.(2007) What kind of a science is psychoanalysis? Psychoanalytic Inquiry (Special Issue: Psychoanalysis and science (Ed. M. Bornstein), 27, 547-58.
Cohler, B.(2008). Nostalgia and the disappointment with modernity: Memory books as adaptive response to Shoah. In. W. Parsons, D. Jonte-Pace, and S. Henking (Eds.) Mourning religion. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 201-22.
Cohler, B. (2008). Two lives, two times: Life-writing after Shoah, Narrative Inquiry, 18, 1-2.
Hammack, P., Cohler, B. (2009). (Eds). The story of sexual identity: Narrative perspectives on the gay and lesbian life course. New York: Oxford University Press.
