Ruth Westheimer Obituary intercourse

Ruth Westheimer, who has died aged 96, was an American psychotherapist famous for changing attitudes towards the typical discussion of sex. He began quietly in 1980 with a 15-minute recorded programme, Talking Sexually, broadcast at midnight on the disused York Radio channel. A moment later it turned into an hour-long live phone-in display.

After tremendous success, she wrote more than 35 books, including Dr. Ruth’s Encyclopedia of Intercourse (1994) and Intercourse for Dummies (1995). He also syndicated his column in international newspapers, and advanced games, videos, tools, and his personal page.

Her boundless enthusiasm, her outspokenness, her German accent and her height – she was once 4 feet 7 inches – made her instantly recognizable and forever popular, but never forgotten. Few in her haystack can claim that she was featured in a primetime science-fiction TV layout (Quantum Soar, 1985), or as Dr. Ruth Weissenheimer’s thin skin in a Batman story (The Dark Knight Returns, 1986). Below was seen and sung with an award-winning musician (Tom Chapin, in his magazine This Good-Looking Planet, 1996). Nor, to be skilled as a sniper in Israel.

He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to Orthodox Jewish parents, Julius Siegel, a haberdashery wholesaler, and Irma (née Hanauer). The most powerful child, Ruth had a happy youth. Julius often took him to the synagogue. Against conservative and religious voices who wanted to criticize her openness, she was quick to insist that sex was not only good but also heavenly; And that his message of sexual liberation had its origins in his faith.

When she was 10, her father was taken by the Nazis, and in 1939 her mother and grandmother sent Ruth to a children’s home in Switzerland for safety. In 1941 the arrival of letters was stopped and the house turned into an orphanage, as her family and fellow scholars disappeared into the focus camps. Ruth never saw her parents again and thought they died in Auschwitz.

At the age of 17 she moved to what was once Palestine and joined the Jewish underground, Haganah, to fight for Israeli self-determination. She trained as a sniper and scout, but in 1948, three weeks before Israel declared self-determination, and on her birthday, she was seriously injured by an exploding shell. After a long recovery, in 1950 she moved to Paris with her first husband David, an Israeli, studied psychology at the Sorbonne and taught at the kindergarten level.

They divorced in 1955 and she traveled with Dan, a French lover, to New York, where she earned a master’s degree in sociology from the New York College for Social Analysis. She and Dan married and had a daughter, Miriam, although they soon divorced.

In 1961, she met a fellow Jewish immigrant, Manfred Westheimer, called Fred, on a snowboarding shuttle. After 9 months, she married him and after some time she became an American citizen. In 1964, their son Joel was born.

In the late sixties, Westheimer joined the organization Deliberate Parenthood in Harlem, New York, and, despite initial shock at the frank communication they produced, she quickly found her vocation. She became enterprise director in 1967. He received his doctorate in 1970 through night classes at the School of Academics, Columbia College. Her work with Deliberate Parenthood led her to contact leading orgasm therapist Helen Singer Kaplan.

In the early 70s, she became an associate schoolmaster of sex counseling at the Lehman School in the Bronx. She taught at the Brooklyn School, Adelphi College, Columbia College, West Level, New York College, the Calhoun School of Yale College, and Princeton College, and was once a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.

A dramatic turn in his career came when he gave a lecture to disused New York broadcasters about the need for sex training programming. Betty Elam of the disused New York radio station WYNY-FM paid Westheimer $25 per hour to produce Talking Sexually. The next few weeks saw studio and office workers gather to listen to this “cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse”, as Wall Side Road magazine further described him, so taboo to work in production. Was.

His performances at midnight on a small, struggling station were getting higher ratings than peak-period programs on primary channels. Westheimer appeared on Overdue Night with David Letterman in 1982 and soon became a household name across the United States. His cable TV display was soon broadcast throughout the United States under the name The Dr. Ruth Display.

Her radio program Ask Dr Ruth was syndicated nationally and around the world, so she became as popular in London and Hong Kong as she was in unused York. In addition to weekly layouts on Israeli TV, she contributed to ITV’s This Morning breakfast show and did spots on TV in Luxembourg, Switzerland and France – she spoke English, French, German and Hebrew.

So she starred with Dr. Ruth in The All Unused Dr. Ruth Display and You’re at the Breeze and reached out to youth and young people with What’s Up, Dr. Ruth. (1989), Never Too Overdue (1992), in addition to Senior Voters.

Sex and sexuality were not his most dominant thoughts. She is also interested in documentaries on folk and religious values, Ethiopian Jews and Bedouin women and in 2023 she was named an Unused York Ambassador for Loneliness. Although she managed to help many people realize their desire for sexual literacy, she never took herself too seriously, and was happy to parody herself and her messages in car and shampoo commercials.

He won many awards and honorary degrees. In 1998, Public Fiction included her among the most brilliant people of the century, and in 2009, Playboy, in its 55th annual edition, ranked her 13th out of the 55 most notable people in the field of sex of the past 55 years. She continued to conduct personal observations and conduct business support and advice through her page for many years, and in 2019 was the subject of a documentary, Ask Dr. Ruth.

Fred died in 1997. Ruth is survived by Miriam and Joel and four grandchildren.