Female Psychiatrists

Sabina Spielrein was a Russian physician who also worked as a psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and teacher during an illustrious professional career that spanned 30 years. A pioneer of psychoanalysis, Spielrein was the first person to bring in and popularize the concept of the death instinct. Sabina Spielrein was also one of the earliest psychoanalysts to study schizophrenia in detail. 

Best known for her pathbreaking bestseller On Death and Dying, Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross also made pioneering research in areas such as near-death studies. Her five stages of grief, or the Kübler-Ross model, has been adopted by corporates to help employees deal with loss and change.

Mexican-born Nora Volkow studied medicine in her country, before moving to New York University, where she became a Laughlin Fellow. Now the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, she was the first to prove that drug abuse is a brain disease. She was featured at TEDMED 2014.

Suzanne Mallouk ran away from her Canada home and moved to New York, where she took up odd jobs to finance her art career. She supported a penniless Jean-Michel Basquiat grow into a wealthy artist and became a muse for his paintings. She later became a practicing psychiatrist.

Marie Bashir created history when she became the first female governor of New South Wales. A doctor, too, she was initially associated with children’s hospitals and later focused on psychiatry. She also worked for the mentally ill and homeless people from the Aboriginal community of Australia.

Born to a Jewish family in southern Lithuania that was well-respected among the community, Bluma Zeigarnik grew up to be a renowned psychologist. She is best remembered for discovering what is known as the Zeigarnik effect, or the phenomenon of remembering incomplete tasks better than complete ones.

Tina Strobos was a Dutch psychiatrist and physician remembered for her resistance work during the Second World War. When she was still a student, Strobos helped rescue over 100 Jewish refugees. In 1989, Yad Vashem recognized her rescue work with the Righteous Among the Nations honor. For her medical work, Strobos was honored with the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal in 1998.