Erna Furman, 76; Child Psychoanalyst Studied Bereavement

Erna Furman, 76, an authority on the grief of parents and children and the mother-child relationship, died of lung cancer Aug. 9 in Cleveland.

Furman was a child psychoanalyst with the Cleveland Center for Child Research and Development and the Hanna Perkins Therapeutic Nursery School for 50 years. She wrote nine books, including “A Child’s Parent Dies: Studies in Childhood Bereavement,” written in collaboration with Anna Freud.

Born in Vienna, she fled with her family to Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazis in 1938 when she was 12. She eluded the Nazis until 1942, when she was sent to the Terezin concentration camp near Prague. She maintained a journal and drew portraits of other prisoners, including many children. The artwork won critical praise years later when it was exhibited in museums from Tokyo to Los Angeles.

After World War II she was educated at the Academy of Commerce in Prague. She also studied in London with Freud, who later recommended her for a position as a child analyst at the Cleveland Center and the Hanna Perkins school.

Her work on children and bereavement won the American Medical Writers Assn. book award in 1975. She also was an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Assn.