Lauretta Bender

Lauretta Bender, M.D. was a child neuropsychiatrist who was born in 1897, best known as the creator of the Bender-Gestalt Test.

Her father was an attorney. She repeated first grade 3 times; she was thought to be mentally retarded because she reversed letters in reading and writing. She eventually received her B.S. and M.A. in biology from the University of Chicago and an M.D. from Iowa State. She had a notorious affair with married psychoanalyst, Dr. Paul Schilder. She eventually married and was a widow when her last child was born. She married again at age 70.

The Bender-Gestalt Test
She is best known for her Visual Motor Gestalt Test described in an 1938 monograph. She worked at Bellevue Hospital in New York City from 1930–1956. Lauretta Bender wrote in 1938 a Monograph entitled: A Visual Motor Gestalt Test and Its Clinical Use. The test consists of reproducing 9 figures that are printed on cards. The figures were derived from the work of the famous Gestalt psychologist Wertheimer. The Bender-Gestalt test as it is now often called, is typically among the top five test used by clinical psychologists. It measures perceptual motor skills, perceptual motor development and gives an indication of neuroloical intactness. It has been used a personality test and a test of emotional problems.

Scoring systems include:
 * Elizabeth M. Koppitz's system for Children (1963)
 * Pascal & Suttell system for Adults (1951);
 * Hutt & Briskin Projective personality feature system (1960);
 * Arthur Canter's Background Interference Procedure (BIP) test for organicty (1976)

Patrica Lacks uses it as a screening device for brain damage. Bender herself said it was "a method of evaluating maturation of gestalt functioning children 4-11's brain functioning by which it responds to a given constellation of stimuli as a whole, the response being a motor process of patterning the perceived gestalt." Bender was a contemporary of David Wechsler, Ph.D., creator of the famous intelligence tests. Wechsler was Chief Psychologist at Bellevue Hospital.