In Memoriam

Ilse K. Jawetz, M.D.

1915-2012

Ilse K. Wheelis, a San Francisco psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who only retired from her clinical practice in 2011, died peacefully at home on January 9, 2012. She was 96.

She was born Ilse Kaulbach in 1915 in Vienna, the only child of Richard Kaulbach, an obstetrician, and Sofie Fuchs. One of only two women in her medical school class, she was forced to interrupt her studies when Hitler took over Austria in 1938. With great difficulty, she was able to leave the country that year at the age of 22, but was forced by Nazi authorities to sign a statement saying that she would never return. Despite great efforts to obtain her parents' passage to the United States they both perished in the Holocaust.

Arriving in New York, she supported herself by working as a governess for the two children of a New York surgeon. At first thwarted in her efforts to return to medical school, she pursued a degree in social work. She married microbiologist Ernest Jawetz, a fellow Viennese whom she helped to get out of Austria, and moved to San Francisco. Ultimately granted full credit for her coursework in Austria, she completed her medical studies, graduating from Stanford Medical School in 1949. That year she was both elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical students' honor society and was awarded the Julian Wolfson Prize for her superior performance in medicine, although was not allowed to attend the annual awards dinner because it was held at an all-male club.

Known professionally as Dr. Jawetz, she started her psychiatric residency at the Langley Porter clinic at the University of California, San Francisco and then completed her training at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Subsequently she returned to the Bay Area where she did her psychoanalytic training at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute.

In addition to the robust private practice she maintained in San Francisco for more than 50 years, she was also much admired for her teaching and held long standing teaching positions at the Psychoanalytic Institute, Langley Porter, and Mount Zion Hospital.

As an active member of the Education Committee of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, Dr. Jawetz held multiple positions in the organization, including Dean for several years. Over her long career, both candidate analysands and supervisees benefited from her disciplined and supportive approach to the psychoanalytic endeavor.

Her marriage to Ernest Jawetz ended in divorce. In 1954 she married Allen Wheelis, also a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst and a well-known author who died in 2007. Her survivors include their daughter Joan Wheelis, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Cambridge, Massachusetts; two stepchildren, Mark Wheelis, a microbiologist at U.C. Davis, and Seattle author Victoria Jenkins; one grandchild and several step-grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held in the spring.