Bender, Lauretta

Bender, Lauretta (1897–1987) psychiatrist; born in Butte, Mont. She received her M.D. from the State University of Iowa in 1926. She was a senior psychiatrist at New York City's Bellevue Hospital (1930–56) and did important research in childhood schizophrenia and brain injury and devised the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test. In 1936 she married her colleague Paul F. Schilder, a highly regarded psychoanalyst who had practiced in Vienna. From 1956 she was principal research scientist at three major New York State mental health facilities. Her four-volume Bellevue Studies series (1952–55) was a major contribution to the literature on child psychology.