What’s Life Like for the Child of a Psychoanalyst?

At the start of Milton Wexler’s career as a psychoanalyst, he devoted his practice to what was still uncharted territory for American practitioners in the 1930s: He attempted to treat schizophrenia through psychotherapy. After making a name for himself at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kan., he moved to the Hollywood Hills in the 1950s, where he became the go-to therapist for troubled artists, a roster of patients that included the likes of Frank Gehry, John Altoon, and, on occasion, Marilyn Monroe. By the 1980s, Wexler was devoting his free time to hereditary diseases and brought needed funding to research for the genetic roots of Huntington’s disease—an affliction that upended the lives of his wife and her family.