Lauretta Bender (1897-1987) was born in Butte, Montana, the oldest of five children and the only daughter in a family of old American stock.  In an updated autobiographical account (Box 15), Bender reveals her admiration for her lawyer-father who delighted in her talents and her early scorn for her mother who disapproved of her non-traditional careerism.  To a great degree, her life was characterized by a value she imbibed from her father, the "strong confidence in the value of the individual who is invincible against the difficulties in his life as long as he strives" (3).

 By Bender's own account, she overcame the formidable handicap of dyslexia in her early school years to graduate as valedictorian of her high school class, as B.A. (1922) and M.A. (1923) from the University of Chicago, and as M.D. from the State of University of
Iowa (1926).  She soon distinguished herself in her work, developing the Bender-Gestalt Motor Test in 1923.  Bender held internships and residencies at the Billings Hospital of the University of Chicago, the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, the University of Amsterdam, and the John's Hopkins University Hospital.  She became associated with Dr. Samuel T. Orton, and, in 1926-1927, held a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship that took her to Holland.  Following her return to the States she worked at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital with C. Marfie Campbell and Karl M. Bowman.

 At this time Bender first learned of the work of Paul Schilder (1886-1940) who would become the single most important figure in her life.  A Viennese psychiatrist of Jewish extraction, Schilder had received his M.D. at the University of Vienna in 1909 and his doctorate from the University of Halle in 1911, and was already a recognized figure in psychiatry.  A sometime associate of Freud, he had served as a physician in the Austrian army during World War I and had taught and practiced at the University Hospital of Vienna from 1918 to 1928.  In 1929/30, when Bender worked at the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins University Hospital under Adolf Meyer, she first met Schilder, who had recently emigrated to the States.  That meeting took place, in her words, "on January 2, 1930, in Phipps Clinic at a regular morning staff conference in the University library.  I knew immediately that this was the man I had been looking for" (21).  In April, when Schilder left Maryland for work at Bellevue Hospital, she "resolved to follow him.  I therefore took the civil service examination for a Bellevue position that summer and started my work as a psychiatrist in the hospital in the fall of 1930 and where I have stayed until today, although many things have intervened" (22).  Among the important effects of her years of interaction with Schilder at Bellevue was her development of important holistic theories concerning child psychiatry, the field of psychiatry in which she was to play a shaping role in later years.  She particularly singles out the importance of art therapy and the innovative work of many colleagues at Bellevue, discussing particularly a recognition of the need to treat young children who had been "deprived socially and emotionally" (32).

 Bender distinguishes Schilder from the other influences on her life: "There came a time in my association with all my other teachers when I felt that I had received from them what I needed.  This never happened with Paul Schilder . . .  There were times when I was afraid of being engulfed by him, of losing my identity and the ability to function by myself. . .  The most important things I learned from him are still not easy to describe . . .  In the seventh year of our acquaintance, in the Fall of 1936, we were married" (37-8).  But this new marriage was not fated to last long.  Schilder was killed in an automobile accident just four years later, leaving Bender with three infant children to raise.  To city Bender's own understatement, however, "His work did not stop.  Neither did my life nor that of our three children" (38).  The documents in this collection reveal that Schilder's "work did not stop" not only because his collaboration with Bender and his influence on the field had been so strong that her work, in a sense, continued along the lines he had mapped out, but more pragmatically because Bender, in addition to her own distinguished contributions to her field, tirelessly edited, translated, issued and reissued his writings for over twenty years.

 In addition to her energetic full-time service at Bellevue and Creedmoor, Bender wrote prolifically, participated in a broad range of professional activities, served as advisor to governmental committees, and supported many organizations devoted to mentally-ill children.  In 1956, after 26 years of distinguished service at Bellevue, where she became Senior Psychiatrist in charge of the children's ward, Bender was appointed Director of Research of the new Children's Unit at Creedmoor State Hospital, and thereby, was provided with an opportunity to embark on what she described "as my life's work" (letter of 6/6/58 to John A. Stamper, Box 15, file 2).  She retired from Creedmoor in 1968, but continued working for New York State until 1973.

 In 1965, she married Henry Benford Parkes, a professor of History at New York University.  After Parkes' death in 1973, she moved to Annapolis, home of her son Peter Schilder, and died there in a nursing home in 1987.