Hilde Bruch (March 11, 1904 – December 15, 1984) was a German-born American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst,[1] known foremost for her work on eating disorders and obesity.

She worked and studied at various medical facilities in New York City and Baltimore before becoming a professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1964.

Hilde Bruch was born in the small German town of Dülken, on the Lower Rhine near the Dutch border, She was the third of seven children, with four brothers and two sisters.

She underwent psychoanalytic training, studying under a number of notable psychiatrists, including Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Harry Stack Sullivan, Theodore Lidz and Lawrence S. Kubie.

In 1943 Bruch returned to New York, opened a private psychoanalytic practice and taught at Columbia University, where she became affiliated with the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

"[9] She believed that this learning takes place during early child-mother interaction, and that disordered hunger awareness resulted from the "absence or paucity of appropriate and confirming responses to signals indicating their needs and other forms of self-expression.