Bertram David Lewin (30 November 1896 – 8 January 1971)[1] was an American psychoanalyst who was both an acute clinician and a contributor to theory, particularly to the study of elation, and of the dream screen.
Lewin had a training analysis with Franz Alexander in Berlin in the 1920s, before publishing his first analytic article in 1930.
This was followed by ten more over the next decade, on subjects ranging from diabetes and claustrophobia to the body as phallus.
[2] The main focus of his interest, however, was in manic states, which he saw as characterised by fleeting identifications with a multiple of outside figures.
[4] He also explored the paradox in elation's dark counterpart, depression, whereby the melancholic in seeking to punish the effigy of their loved one in fact punishes themselves having incorporated this effigy.