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= Jane W. Kessler = Jane W. Kessler (born March 9, 1921) is an American clinician, teacher, and scholar who founded the Mental Development Center at Western Reserve University. She changed the field of child psychology by creating real treatment programs for children with developmental delays that did not remove them from their family. She also introduced the idea of psychologists advocating for the parents of children affected by developmental delays.

In 1966, Kessler published her renowned book The Psychopathology of Childhood, which was later edited in 1988. Kessler was a full time professor in the psychology department of WRU, then became part of the Senate Chair during the merging of Case Institute of Technology (CIT) and Western Reserve University (WRU).

Early Life
Jane Kessler was born in Beverly, Massachusetts on March 9, 1921. She was one of two children - her brother was five and a half years younger than her. Both Kessler's mother and father were well educated. Her mother earned her BA from Boston University and her Master in Business Economics from Columbia University. Her father graduated from MIT as a chemical engineer, and he worked in the oil industry examining potential sites for oil refineries. This meant that Kessler and her family traveled and moved much of her childhood. In 1937, Kessler graduated from Scarsdale High School in New York at the age of 16.

Education
Kessler attended the University of Michigan for her undergraduate education, and this is when she says she became more aware of political and social issues. She graduated in 1940 with a degree in psychology. Kessler went on to complete her Masters in psychology at Columbia University in 1941.

After this, Kessler started her doctorate at the University of Michigan, but she interrupted her education to work in the Navy as a psychologist during World War II. After the war, Kessler moved to Cleveland to be closer to her parents. Using the GI bill to fund her education, Kessler transferred her credits to Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) and completed her PhD in clinical psychology in 1951.

Early Career
When World War II began, Kessler enlisted to work in the Navy as a psychologist. In 1943, she joined the WAVES to work as a psychologist in the hospital core. She initially went to Smith College for training. Kessler then worked at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital outside of Chicago, eventually ending up at the San Diego Naval Hospital, where she was stationed until 1946. She worked in the psychiatric units working with soldiers returning from the war to determine if they could be discharged. Her work involved testing and interviewing patients, then writing reports. There was no treatment for these soldiers.

After the war as she was working on her PhD, Kessler worked as a secretary in the psychiatry department. There she dealt a lot with patients who were undergoing shock treatments. She had a problem with this form of treatment which inspired her to begin her work on treatments for mental illnesses.

University Hospital
When Kessler started working at University Hospital in Cleveland, she was the fist clinical psychologist., working primarily with children with developmental delays. She became a part of testing a new experimental treatment for developmental delays that the pediatric and neurological departments collaborated on. This experiment was designed to increase blood flow to the brain with the goal of increasing the IQ of these children. Kessler was in charge of documenting the results of about 400-500 children who underwent the treatment. In the end, Kessler published her results that the experiment did not cause any notable difference in the IQ of the patients. For many patients, this was the only possible treatment out there that would not separate their families.

In 1984, Kessler was named the Chief Psychologist of University Hospital's Child Psychiatry Clinic.

Mental Development Center
After seeing the lack of treatment available for children with development delays, Kessler wanted a better way to help these children and their families. In 1958, Kessler founded the Mental Development Center at Western Reserve University (WRU) with the help of the Cleveland Foundation. After a short time, she was named the director and continued in that role for 20 years. Two major steps that Kessler took was her focus on the families and her focus on the school system. Kessler worked to advocate for the parents and what the parents wanted for their children, something that the medical field had failed to do until that point.

The other problem that Kessler saw was the barriers to education that children with developmental delays faced. To go to school, a child had to meet a certain IQ level and a certain mental age. Because of this, children who met the IQ requirement but not the mental age could not attend school. Kessler created a preschool for such children on the WRU campus. These programs gained national attention since it was the first American university-based center for developmental delays in children, prompting Julie Nixon Eisenhower to visit the center.

The Mental Development Center had also received support from the Schubert Foundation. In 1994, the center broke off from WRU to become a part of the Murtis H. Taylor Multi-Service Center. It eventually came to be known as the Schubert Center for Child Development. This center provided links between research and the community.

Western Reserve University
Kessler began teaching at the Western Reserve University Medical School in psychology, and eventually became a full-time professor in the psychology department for a decade. Kessler taught courses on child development with Dr. Benjamin Spock for 10 years. She focused her attention on creating a practicum course, while Spock focused on the traditional lecture side. Kessler served as the Department Chair of Psychology at WRU. After collecting her teaching materials, Kessler published her book The Psychopathology of Childhood in 1966, and revised it in 1988.

Kessler also taught a psychology course on television. She would go to a studio to record the show that aired three times a week during a semester. Students could register for the class through Western Reserve University and take the final exam for credit. Even those who did not register for the class could watch the program on TV.

During the federation of Western Reserve University and Case Institute of Technology, Kessler served as the Senate Chair to ease the process of merging the schools.

In addition to being a professor at Western Reserve University, she was also an instructor at the Cleveland Child Analytic Program.

Personal Life
Kessler married someone she had met at the University of Michigan, but during the war, the couple got divorced. She later married another psychologist. He had graduated from Western Reserve University's medical school in 1933. Kessler has a son who worked in the music program in the University schools. He is now retired and he works at Cleveland State University and directs the Suburban Symphony in Cleveland.

In 1990, when Kessler was 69 years old, she retired from Case Western Reserve University. She bought Appletree Books in Cleveland Heights in 1993, and owned it for 20 years.

Awards and Legacy
Because of her contributions to the field of Child Psychology and to the Cleveland community, Kessler has been honored with high positions and awards.

Kessler was a Fellow of the American Orthopsychiatric Association (AOA) and Chairperson of the Council on Child and Youth Issues. She was a member of the AOA Board of Directors, and she was elected the President of the AOA in 1977. In addition, she was on the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association (APA) and was on the APA's Ethics Committee, serving as their chairperson of the Ethics Review Task Force. She had previously been the President of the Ohio Psychological Association in 1969.

Kessler received the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology diploma in clinical psychology, which is the highest position in her field. In 1981, Jane was the first woman to receive the Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Institutional Practice. This award recognized outstanding practitioners in psychology, and she was only the third person to receive this award.

In 2017, Kessler won the Lucy Adams Leffingwell Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of Psychological Science from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). Then in 2018, she was awarded the Frank and Dorothy Humel Hovorka Prize from CWRU. This award is presented annually "to an active or emeritus member of the Case Western Reserve University faculty in recognition of exceptional achievements in teaching, research and scholarly service that have benefited the community, nation and world".

In her honor, the annual Kessler-Freedheim lecture at CWRU is held. In addition, the university created an award in Kessler's honor. The award, Jane Kessler Award for Commitment to Scholarship in the Field of Disabilities, honors students who have the potential to inform educational and clinical policy.