Funeral Details

Dr. Rita M. Weinberg nee Mohr age 91, clinical psychologist and professor. Beloved wife of the late Dr. Samuel Kirson Weinberg, a sociologist who died in 2001 after 45 years of marriage. Loving mother of Dr. Carol Weinberg (Harold Winston), Roger (Dorit) Weinberg and Doug (Marcia) Weinberg. Proud grandmother of Dahlia (Itay) Shamir, Tamar Weinberg (Shai Eirlich), Elizabeth and Katherine Winston, Sarah and Kobi Weinberg. Great grandmother of Arielle and Sivan Shamir. Devoted sister of Phyllis Moskowitz, Marion (Joseph) Green and the late William Mohr who died in 1993. Dr. Weinberg was a Pioneering Psychologist in Children’s Mental Health and Educator of Generations of Teachers. She was a clinical psychologist for more than six decades and a university professor who taught thousands of prospective teachers, school psychologists, and others, died on January 28.
Born in Detroit on March 9, 1924, Dr. Weinberg studied at the University of Chicago, where she received bachelor’s degree and doctorate in clinical psychology in 1946 and 1955, respectively. Her dissertation, written under the supervision of Bruno Bettelheim, studied children with rheumatoid arthritis and explored the relationship between the disease and their psyche. While in a graduate class taught by Carl Rogers, she met her future husband, Dr. Samuel Kirson Weinberg.
After receiving her undergraduate degree, Dr. Weinberg began a private clinical practice that continued throughout her life. Her practice focused primarily on children and family matters, including depression, addictions, autism, and anti-social behavior.
She worked for several years at the Institute for Juvenile Research, one of the nation’s first mental health centers for children. Thereafter, for more than a quarter century, she served a consulting psychologist to the Child Development Center’s Infant Welfare Society in Chicago. Her work there with Dr. Julius Richmond, who later became U.S. Surgeon General, resulted in the development of the nationally recognized Infant Welfare preschool program that later served as a model for Head Start.
She collaborated with Betty Ball to develop The Behavior Deviance Profile, a rating scale for emotionally disturbed children and adolescents. The profile enabled therapists to identify children who were kept too long in mental health facilities.
Dr. Weinberg spent a year in Ghana, conducting a study of the personality of male teenagers and published her findings in a paper about personality and the self among African children.
From 1997-2005, Dr. Weinberg served on the board of The Theraplay Institute. Theraplay is a therapy that uses structured playful interaction to build relationships between children and their families.
Dr. Weinberg trained in several types of psychotherapy, including psychoanalytic, behaviorism, EMDR, neurolinguistics programming, and thought-field therapy.
She gravitated toward forms of therapy that could modify behavior rapidly. Intrigued by the power of language, she co-authored a book with Bruce Boyer about the use of metaphors to change behavior. She spent several summers teaching about metaphors in Greece and gave workshops on the topic in Turkey, England, and Israel. Dr. Weinberg presented in many forums, including the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences, the International Society for School Psychologists.
For most of her professional life, Dr. Weinberg was a professor of psychology at National Louis University, where she began teaching in 1976. She taught undergraduate and graduate classes in human development, personality assessment, psychopathology, and cognitive psychology before retiring as a professor emeritus in 2011.
An avid exerciser, Dr. Weinberg routinely swam half a mile and walked two miles every day.