Obituary — Robert S. Laufer: 1942–1989

Abstract

Robert S. Laufer died on July 25, 1989 in Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York City following a valiant and courageous battle with cancer. Throughout several experimental treatment protocols for his leukemia, Bob was supported by his wife, fellow scholar and co-author, Ellen FreyWouters, who shared in his struggle to live fully and productively in the face of his terminal illness. Dr. Laufer was born in Holland in 1942 during the Nazi Holocaust. During infancy he was hidden by the Dutch underground to protect his religious identity as a Jew while his family was interned at Auschwitz concentration camp; only his mother survived. The Protestant women who hid him were a strong influence on his later commitment to contribute to the understanding and help of those who were victimized. He emigrated to the United States when he was 8 years old, and spent most of his childhood in Detroit, Michigan. Dr. Laufer attended Monteith College, an innovative liberal arts college in Detroit, Michigan, where he obtained his bachelor of arts degree in sociology and psychology in 1964. He continued his studies in sociology at Wayne State University and Brandeis University where he received his doctorate in 1972. During his professional career, he taught at Beloit College (1968-1969), the University of Wisconsin (1969-1970), and the State University of New York at Albany (1970-1972)o After receiving his Ph.D., he moved to New York City, joined the graduate faculty of the City University of New York, and taught at Brooklyn College, where he was a full professor at the time of his death. His doctoral dissertation was entitled, Education in Post-Industrial Society: Innovation and Conflict in American Higher Education, a theme which reflected his research publications early in his career. In particular, his inter~t in generational conflict, radical youth identity, and the relationship of the individual to complex social systems were eventually to lay the cornerstone for his later theoretical conceptualizations of the fundamental impact of traumatic events on personal identity and intrapsychic structure.