[2] Hanfmann established a counseling service at Brandeis University[3] and helped form its psychology department with Abraham Maslow.
She had a "vivid memory of reading William James’ short Psychology during a bombardment of Kiev..."[2] Hanfmann was twelve years old at the beginning of the Russian Revolution.
[2] After the civil war, her family moved to Lithuania and she resumed her education graduating with a high school diploma.
[2] In 1922, her family moved to Berlin, Germany, and their last name was converted from Cyrillic version, Ganfman, to the Latin alphabet, Hanfmann.
Hanfmann described Peters as being especially important in her education, saying he “transformed [her] school life.”[2][7] He assigned her thesis problem, which she published and received her doctorate in 1927.
[1] After earning her doctoral degree, Hanfmann says she was unable to find work in academia due to ethnic and language barriers.
[5] During this time Hanfmann gained clinical experience and was able to perform a number of psychological studies, one of which was with Dembo on new patients’ reaction to the hospital.
[5][2][1] In 1936, Hanfmann left Worcester State Hospital with a grant from Masonic Foundation to continue research on schizophrenia.
[1] She joined Kasanin in Chicago at Michael Reese Hospital, where the pair collected data and wrote more papers on this subject.
[1] In this personality study, she interviewed displaced Soviet citizens “as informants about life behind the Iron Curtain.”[2] Based on this research, in 1976 she and her colleague Helen Beier published a book, Six Russian Men: Lives in Turmoil.
[3] In 2010, William R. Woodward, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, wrote in his paper, "Russian women émigrées in psychology: Informal Jewish networks," that Hanfmann and two other Russian women psychologists depend upon the patronage of Jewish mentors and networks of patronage by sympathetic male psychologists.