Hyman Spotnitz (September 29, 1908 – April 18, 2008) was an American psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who pioneered an approach to working psychoanalytically with patients with schizophrenia in the 1950s called modern psychoanalysis.
Born in Boston to immigrant parents, Spotnitz attended Harvard College and received a degree in medicine from Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin in 1934.
Spotnitz's treatment approach emphasizes the development of the narcissistic transference in which the patient relates to the therapist as if he were part of his own mind, rather than a separate person.
The caseworkers who were employed by the JBG found that Spotnitz’s supervision helped them to achieve excellent results in treating severely emotionally disturbed children and their families.
Not long thereafter they were followed by[citation needed] Avivah Sayres, Selwyn Brody, Phyllis W. Meadow, Evelyn Liegner, Leonard Liegner, Fanny Milstein, Lou Ormont, Benjamin Margolis, Ethel Clevans, Marie Coleman Nelson, Arnold Bernstein, Murray Sherman, Stanley Hayden, Gerald M. Fishbein, Harold Stern, Jacob Kesten, Jacob Kirman, William Kirman, Robert Marshall, Harold Davis, Charles and Deborah Greene Bershatsky, Adrienne Fischer and many others too numerous to mention.
Spotnitz's work in psychoanalytic group therapy and in modern psychoanalysis in general has been continued and furthered by[citation needed] Stanley Hayden, Charles and Deborah Greene Bershatsky, Leo Nagelberg, Lou Ormont, Leslie Rosenthal, Phyllis Meadow, Michael Brook, Bob Unger, Gerald Lucas and Marie Lucas, among many others.