Contributed
Dr. Ruth Doorbar, concert pianist, Julliard School of Music, New York.Avia Ustanny, Freelance Writer
DR. RUTH Doorbar, who spent 20 years as a clinical psychologist in New York juggling the demands of offices based uptown in Manhattan and downtown in Greenwich Village (one practice pretty much paid for the other) has enjoyed a life fully lived, and several renewals in addition. Her career in psychology is only one of several done consecutively, layered upon others pursued concurrently.
She is known best in her capacity of clinical psychologist.
Ruth Doorbar came to Jamaica in 1973 for a total lifestyle change, to relax and enjoy our music, to start a second life of deserved idleness. It did not happen.
Over twenty-seven years later, she still works at the same frenetic pace as she did before "retirement" in New York. For over two decades she has laboured as a mental health consultant with the Ministry of Health and also in private practice. She continues to contribute to academic journals and is host of a radio programme. She started fast, and efforts to the contrary, continues to live life at a fast and successful clip. She has been recognised for this.
In 1958 Ruth Doorbar was elected to the New York Academy of Sciences on the basis of her original research on metapsychiatry. The project focused on the use of art to interpret personality. She was then the youngest member to be elected to that august body.
It was not something that either herself or her parents could have foreseen. The psychologist's early interest in music (she attended Julliard) was set aside for something that could pay the bills. She was persuaded by her parents to secure a degree in chemistry at Rutgers University. This she did but her desire to do research in the field was stymied. It was a dead end. She returned to graduate school in January of 1950 and secured an interim job with psychiatrist Ralph Brancale, director of the New Jersey State Diagnostic Center. This was where the interest in psychology began.
Following on the passing of a state law in 1949 that all sex offenders had to be examined fully by a psychologist, her career took off. "My first 5000 patients were sex offenders", Doorbar recalls. "Brancale had a technique of having patients paint something for analysis. He also put them under hypnosis and free associated. He taught me to do this."
Ruth was not certified then, but by September of the same year she was ensconced at New York University pursuing a graduate degree in clinical psychology. She still pursued her work at the diagnostic centre on a part time basis. Her published work , The First 300 Sex Offenders, Sexual Behaviour in Males, was the result of the work with Ralph Brancale and Albert Ellis. Later came another paper and book Sexual Behaviour in Females evolved in pursuit of work done at the invitation of Alfred Kinsey at the University of Indiana. Later research on transsexuals was done in association with John Hopkins University (the first institution to do the required operations).
Initial surveys showed that the ratio of males to females wanting sex changes was 8 to 1. For every eight men wanting to become a woman, there was only one woman who wanted to reverse her natural status. The result of this was Sexual Reassignment, published by John Hopkins University Press. Today, the mental problems associated with sexuality are still a significant part of her focus.
