MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

When many people think of child psychiatrists and comic books, what comes to mind is comics critic Dr. Fredric Wertham, a subject of both popular and academic curiosities. The coverage of new scholarship following the opening of Wertham’s papers in 2010 has stoked this interest. However, he was not the only child psychiatrist writing and speaking about comic books in the 1940s and 50s, as he shared an interest, but not a stance, with Dr. Lauretta Bender. Despite Bender’s prominence at the time, she receives much less attention than Wertham in historical treatments of comic books. Furthermore, while Wertham is often mentioned in histories of childhood and child rearing, Bender’s appearances are more infrequent, and rarely connected to comic books. This project attempts to both provide a corrective to this tendency and explore why it is the case. Using the Lauretta Bender Papers housed at Brooklyn College as well as her published writings, I trace Bender’s thinking on the subject from 1941, when she co-wrote her first article on the topic, through the mid-1940s, when she joined Detective Comics’ Editorial Advisory Board, authored another paper, and spoke on the radio concerning comic books. In particular, I examine the unique way in which Bender laid claim to authority emanating from both her clinical experience and her status as a mother. Finally, I consider her statements at the 1954 Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings, where Wertham more famously spoke, examining how Bender’s views of childhood development enabled her to resist changing her position despite changes in the comic books themselves, as well why Bender’s views faded from prominence, even as Wertham’s became a subject of ridicule.