Rosalind Dymond Cartwright PhD

December 30, 1922-January 15, 2021

Rosalind Dymond Cartwright, Ph.D., beloved mother and grandmother, passed away at her Chicago home on the evening of Friday, January 15, 2021. She was affectionately known among close colleagues and friends as the “Queen of Dreams.”

Dr. Cartwright was born in New York City on December 30, 1922 to parents Henry and Stella Hein Falk along with siblings Eleanor, Norma, and John. In her youth, the family returned to their hometown of Toronto, Canada where she later attended The University of Toronto for her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in psychology. She earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from Cornell University in 1949.

Dr. Cartwright was a pioneer in the fields of clinical sleep medicine and psychological sleep science.

One of the first women to establish a career in psychology, sleep research and later sleep medicine, she was a curious, determined scientist and a generous mentoring professor. She wrote four books and hundreds of scholarly papers on the topics of psychology, sleep, and dreaming throughout her career. She mentored graduate students and sat on and chaired committees at the NIMH and NIH, and was committed to ensuring that both women and women’s issues were represented in sleep research studies.

She earned her doctorate in psychology at Cornell University and while there in 1948 she authored a seminal paper on the role of empathy titled, “A preliminary investigation into the relation of insight and empathy.” J Consult Psychol, 12: 228-233, and the following year, in 1949, “A scale for the measurement of empathetic ability. J Consult Psychol, 13:127-133. This was ground-breaking work in the field of psychology and empathy.

After receiving her doctorate, she taught briefly at Mount Holyoke College, later deciding that she needed further training in methods and statistics in order to pursue a career in research. She accepted an offer to work at the University of Chicago with the founder of humanistic or client-centered psychotherapy, Carl Rogers, who was interested in her work on empathy. Rogers would later be considered one of the most influential psychotherapists of all time. There, she conducted psychotherapy research for approximately 10 years.

While at the University of Chicago, she co-authored with Rogers the ground-breaking book, Psychotherapy and Personality Change. Rogers, C.R. and Dymond, R. (1954) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. She then moved on to become an associate professor and then full professor of psychology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where she set up her first sleep research lab under the guidance of Allan Rechtschaffen, Ph.D. She was one of the early sleep scientists to study the relationship between REM sleep and dreaming. In 1977, she became professor and chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Rush University Medical Center, and founder and director of the sleep disorder service and research center. There she established one of the nation’s first world class clinical centers for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders. In 1980, she became board-certified in sleep medicine by the American Board of Sleep Medicine (ABSM). In the year 2000, she was given the distinction of an endowed chair in the name of James A. Hunter, University Professor, Department of Psychology, at Rush University, and from 2000-2008 held the position of Senior Researcher, Sleep Disorders Service and Research Center. She remained at Rush for the rest of her career. She stepped down from that position in 2008 and became Professor Emerita Neuroscience Program Graduate College, and Professor Emerita, Medical College, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois.

She had a lifelong interest in the mind at sleep and was fascinated by dreams, their function and their meaning to the dreamer. She published a series of books entitled Night Life: Explorations in Dreaming,

A Primer on Sleep and Dreaming,and Crisis Dreaming: Using Your Dreams to Solve Your Problems, (co-authored with Lynnne Lamberg). Her final book, The Twenty-Four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives, describes the importance of sleep for the regulation of disturbing emotions. Her pioneering research earned her the 2004 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Sleep Research Society (SRS).

Dr. Cartwright formed a unique theory of the function of dreaming. She believed that the healthy dreaming mind sought to integrate all parts of an individual’s identity. Dreaming offered the opportunity to sift through the contents and events of the day and to assign meaning to the day's experiences. It pulled out the file drawers of the mind and filed experiences in the appropriate places, comparing and contrasting current events to historic life events, allowing the individual to form a more current and accurate view of themselves, thereby updating their identity each night so that upon waking they would have a settled and ordered concept of self. This theory is explored in her final book The Twenty-Four Hour Mind. She had completed the second edition of that book and was planning to publish it later this year.

She is preceded in death by her husband, Richard P. Dennis and her daughter Christine A. Cartwright. She is survived by her daughter Carolyn L. Cartwright, and grandson Maximillian C. Meyers of New York, her step-daughter Amy Russell and son-in-law Bret Russell of WA, her grandchildren Matthew and Mark Russell and their spouses Yao Russell and Claire Russell, her niece Mara Thompson and her great-grandchildren.

Charitable contributions can be made in Dr. Cartwright’s name to the Parkinson's Foundation or

The American Parkinson Disease Foundation.

Memorial Services will be held at Drake & Son Funeral Home, Chicago, Illinois at a future time due to travel restrictions resulting from the current Corona Virus Pandemic.

Any person wishing to be notified regarding the deceased or her future memorial services should contact Carolyn Cartwright or Drake & Son Funeral Home.

Information taken from: https://aasm.org/in-memoriam-sleep-dreams-rosalind-cartwright/

And the professional Curriculum Vitae of Rosalind F. Dymond Cartwright, Ph.D.

Obituary By Peter B. Zeldow, Ph.D, colleague and friend

As well as personal knowledge of her work by her daughter, Carolyn Cartwright

The funeral will be on Saturday July 30th, 2022 at 11am at Rosehill Cemetary

5800 North Ravenswood Avenue

Chicago, Illinois 60660

A lunch reception will follow from 2-5pm. Please rsvp to attend to [email protected]