In Memoriam: Bertram H. Schaffner

Dr. Bertram Schaffner was a gay man. He was an extraordinary man, and he was a gay man. To really know and understand Bert, you must know and accept this fact just as he had to. You see, Bert’s wonderfully rich life was shaped at every turn by his need to confront this reality. Bert’s earliest memories were that his “difference” was perfectly normal until, that is, when adults became aware of his gayness and he was made to feel “wicked.” He grew up feeling that he was someone to be avoided (Goldman, 1995). Bert told me, “I always longed to feel acceptable, but despaired that that could ever be. I remained intensely interested in other people, and tried to understand them. Perhaps because I felt unwanted, I made it a point not to reject anyone. I cultivated tolerance” (Merlino, 2007). I was asked to speak about Dr. Schaffner’s professional life as a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, pioneer in the treatment of persons with HIV/ AIDS, his leadership in the creation of associations for gay and lesbian physicians and mental health professionals, and his personal mentoring of many gay professionals. As I reflected on Dr. Schaffner’s remarkable three quarters of a century of psychiatric practice it became clear to me that a unifying, perhaps the unifying, dynamic in his life was his constant confrontation with his homosexuality and his longing to be accepted. Bert told a reporter last year from his alma mater, Swarthmore College, that “The need to know what makes a person gay and to understand how to live as a gay man without suffering emotional turmoil has been a driving force” in his life (Breen, 2009). From his earliest memories he didn’t seem to fit in. Bertram Schaffner1 was born left-handed but forced, while in an autocratic German