| Herman Feifel |
 Herman Feifel was born into a Jewish Ukrainian family in Brooklyn, New York, in 1915. Beginning his academic career as an
undergraduate at City College of New York studying history/sociology/psychology/philosophy, Herman Feifel went on to gain
a Masters (1939) and PhD (1948), both in psychology, from Columbia University. During the Second World War Herman Feifel was
an aviation psychologist for the US Air Force (1942-44), and then a clinical and research psychologist for the US Army in
the Adjutant General's Office (1944-49), thus beginning a long career associated with trauma, loss and death. This clinical
interest in the military continued when Herman Feifel went to work for the Veteran's Administration in 1960 as Chief Psychologist,
a position he occupied until his retirement in 1992. Herman Feifel is famous in the field of death, dying and bereavement
for organising a conference of the American Psychological Association on the subject of 'death', from which was published
his 1959 book The Meaning of Death. This brought together professionals from a variety of disciplines, and Herman Feifel also
discusses those figures that went on to form the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement. The interview is
philosophical in nature, making many comments on Western attitudes to dying, as well as the changing views of mind/body relations
within the field of psychology. Herman Feifel died on 18 January 2003.
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| Interview conducted by David Clark, 10 June 1996 |
| Interview Duration: 2 hours, 15 minutes |
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