Dorienne Sorter

Dorienne "Dori" Sorter was an American psychoanalyst, clinical social worker and author who spent decades working as a therapist, teacher and supervising analyst in New York City, helping to shape the field of relational psychoanalysis and infant-informed treatment of adults. She was best known within her profession for her contributions to the study of intersubjectivity, the idea that the emotional exchange between infant and caregiver, and later between patient and therapist, shapes psychological development and healing.

She was born on October 2, 1933, in Detroit, Michigan, to Samuel and Minnie Lachman, and grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she graduated from the Punahou School. She went on to earn a master's degree in social work from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in clinical social work from New York University, training that placed her at the intersection of social work and psychoanalytic theory for the rest of her working life.

Sorter built a long and respected career as a practicing clinician, maintaining a private psychotherapy practice while also serving as a faculty member and supervising analyst at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York. She was a co-author, with Beatrice Beebe, Judith Rustin and Steven Knoblauch, of the 2005 book Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment, a work that applied findings from infant observation research to the understanding of adult psychotherapy. She also published articles in professional journals, including a 2009 essay titled The Journey of a Psychoanalyst in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, in which she reflected on her own development as a clinician.

Her influence was felt less through public fame than through the generations of patients, students and supervisees who passed through her practice and classrooms. Colleagues in the psychoanalytic community credited her with helping to bring ideas from developmental and infant research into mainstream clinical practice, a shift that reshaped how many therapists think about the emotional undercurrents of the therapeutic relationship.

Sorter died at her home in South Egremont, Massachusetts, on August 25, 2026, at the age of 92, after what her family described as a two year struggle with cancer. Her death was announced through obituary notices placed by her family in The New York Times and The Berkshire Eagle. A graveside funeral was held on August 30, 2026, at Hillside Cemetery in Egremont, Massachusetts, and her family has asked that donations in her memory be made to the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, which has established a scholarship fund in her name.