FREEMAN, Lucy (Greenbaum) 1916-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born December 13, 1916, in New York, NY; died of complications from Alzheimer's disease December 29, 2004, in New York, NY. Journalist and author. Freeman was a former New York Times reporter who became well known for her articles and books about psychology and psychotherapy. She graduated from Bennington College with a B.A. in 1938, and two years later was hired by the New York Times. Initially, and like many female journalists at the time, she was relegated to writing for the society pages. She caught a break in 1947, however, when she wrote a story about the explosion of two ships carrying munitions in Galveston Bay, Texas. This led to better assignments from her editors. She was drawn to writing about psychology and psychiatry after she received some psychotherapy herself to help her overcome social anxiety. Freeman not only succeeded in a profession dominated at the time by men, but she also managed to gain a wide audience to read her stories about psychiatry. The field was still relatively new at the time, and psychotherapy patients were often regarded with embarrassment in those years. After leaving her reporting job in 1952, Freeman published dozens of nonfiction works about psychology and psychiatry, including Hope for the Troubled (1953), The Story of Psychoanalysis (1958), Exploring the Mind of Man: Sigmund Freud and the Age of Psychology (1969), The Sorrow and the Fury: Overcoming Hurt and Loss from Childhood to Old Age (1978), and Our Inner World of Rage: Understanding and Transforming the Power of Anger (1990). She also discussed her own psychotherapy in her first book, Fight against Fears (1951). Freeman's writings in the field led to a better understanding among the public about mental illness, and for her work she was given the Writers Award from the American Psychiatric Association in 1976 and the National Media Award from the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1986. In addition to her nonfiction, she also published a number of mystery novels.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times, January 3, 2005, p. A17.

ONLINE

Editor & Publisher,http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ (January 3, 2005).