Fredric Wertham

Fredric Wertham
Fredric Wertham reads EC Comics' Shock Illustrated in 1955
Born	March 20, 1895 (1895-03-20) Munich, German Empire
Died	November 18, 1981 (1981-11-19) (aged 86) Kempton, Pennsylvania
Education	University of Würzburg (M.D., 1921)
Occupation	Psychiatry
Spouse(s)	Florence Hesketh (1902–1987)

Fredric Wertham (March 20, 1895 – November 18, 1981) was a German-educated American psychiatrist and crusading author who protested the purportedly harmful effects of violent imagery in mass media and comic books on the development of children. His best-known book was Seduction of the Innocent (1954), which suggested that comic books were dangerous to children. Wertham's criticisms of comic books helped spark a U.S. Congressional inquiry into the comic book industry and the creation of the Comics Code. He called television "a school for violence", and said "If I should meet an unruly youngster in a dark alley, I prefer it to be one who has not seen Bonnie and Clyde."

Wertham was born on March 20, 1895 in Munich, under the name Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer. He did not change his name legally to Fredric Wertham until 1927. He studied at King's College London, at the Universities of Munich and Erlangen, and graduated with an M.D. degree from the University of Würzburg in 1921. He was very much influenced by Dr. Emil Kraepelin, a professor of psychology at the University of Munich, and worked briefly at the Kraepelin Clinic in Munich in 1922. Kraepelin emphasized the effects of environment and social background on psychological development. Around this time Wertham corresponded and visited with Sigmund Freud, who influenced him in his choice of psychiatry as his specialty.

In 1922 he accepted an invitation to come to the United States and work under Adolf Meyer at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He became a United States citizen and married the sculptress Florence Hesketh in 1927. He moved to New York City in 1932 to accept a senior staff position at the Bellevue Mental Hygiene Clinic, the psychiatric clinic connected with the New York Court of General Sessions in which all convicted felons received a psychiatric examination that was used in court. In 1935 he testified for the defense in the trial of Albert Fish, declaring him insane. In 1946, Wertham opened the Lafargue Clinic in the basement of St. Philip's Church in Harlem, a low-cost psychiatric clinic specializing in black teenagers. The clinic was financed by voluntary contributions.