Sofie Lazarsfeld

Sofie Munk was born in Austrian-Silesia (now Opava, Czech Republic). Her father died when she was four years old, and she was raised by her mother in Silesia. In the late 1890s she moved to Vienna, where she met and married Viennese lawyer Robert Lazarsfeld. In the 1920s she met the psychologist Alfred Adler and trained in psychology. In 1924 she began her career as a writer dealing primarily with children, women, marriage, sexual issues, and personal psychology. In 1925 she opened her own practice, specializing in education and marriage counselling, and ran it until the Nazis closed it. In 1934 she was arrested by the Nazis as a political activist. In 1938 she and her husband fled to Paris to escape the Nazis. When the Nazis invaded and occupied France, they fled again to the southern France. After the death of her husband in 1941, she emigrated to New York City, where she continued her work, founding the Individual Psychology Association and serving temporarily as its vice-president. She continued writing and lecturing until her death in 1976.