About the author
Dr. Bernard W. Bail, M.D. is a physician, a psychoanalyst and a training analyst who lives and practices in Beverly Hills, California. He has worked with both patients and analysts for over fifty years. Dr. Bail is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association where he chairs the ongoing discussion group “Infant Mental Life and the Dream in Psychoanalysis.” Through his intensive work in the unconscious via the dream, Dr. Bail developed a new paradigm for psychoanalysis centered at the beginning of human life.
Dr. Bail has led a courageous and fascinating life that has resulted in significant service to humanity. Beginning in the 1940’s with valorous and life-changing duty as a lead radar navigator bombardier in Europe, he was captured and interned in a German prisoner of war camp hospital. He was profoundly changed by this experience, as documented in his moving memoir “Irmgards Flute”, and inspired to become a doctor, in particular a psychiatrist, and eventually a psychoanalyst, dedicated to understanding and thereby healing, the suffering and violence he had witnessed and been subject to during World War II.
His pursuit of the deeper truths hidden in the heart of humankind led him eventually to Beverly Hills, California where he has practiced the art of psychoanalysis for the past 60 years. A lifetime of listening to the dreams of his patients with an open mind has allowed him to glimpse the origins of human suffering and to serve as a resource for illuminating the wisdom and truth of the unconscious as expressed through our dreams. In the wake of his discoveries and new ideas he has made the art of psychoanalysis into a science which he has documented in his groundbreaking book, “A Mother’s Signature”(The life and times of the fetus in the womb)
For his military service during World War II, Dr. Bail received the Distinguished Service Cross, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, five Air Medals, and five Battle Stars in the European Theater of Operations, a Purple Heart, a Prisoner of War Medal, and the 44th Bomb Group Presidential Citation. In addition, the French government awarded Dr. Bail the French Legion of Honor, the highest military honor bestowed by France.