Ruth Westheimer

Birth Data

Biography

German-American psychosexual therapist known as Dr. Ruth. A flamboyant psychiatrist, broadcaster and writer, she doles out sex advice like chicken soup in her cheerful German accent, creating a phenomenally successful radio show. A pioneer in radio talk-shows, she began a 15-minute show called "Sexually Speaking" in September, 1980. With her immense popularity, she went on TV, wrote a newspaper column and published five books including an autobiography, "All In A Lifetime." 

Dr. Westheimer was sent to a school in Switzerland at the age of ten which became an orphanage for most of the German-Jewish students sent there. Her parents went to Auschwitz. At 17 she went to Israel where she fought for that country's independence as a member of the Haganah. She impetuously married and moved to Paris in the early '50s. where she studied psychology at the Sorbonne and taught kindergarten. Leaving the marriage and France behind, she moved to the U.S., where she made a second, enduring marriage; two kids. 

Dr. Ruth immigrated to the U.S. in 1956 where she obtained her Masters degree in Sociology and her Ph.D. in Education from Columbia University. After earning her doctorate at Columbia, she became Adjunct Assistant Professor at New York University. While lecturing at colleges and universities, she built a private practice in New York City. She studied human sexuality with Dr. Helen Singer-Kaplan at New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center. Five foot tall and full of life, Dr. Ruth is a pioneer in spreading what she has labeled "sexual literacy." She has been twice named College Lecturer of the Year. "The Dr. Ruth Show" is syndicated nationally and internationally.

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