Donna Bentolila, L.C.S.W., Ph.D

It is with the greatest of sadness that SEFAPP informs its membership and other interested colleagues of the passing of Donna Bentolila, L.C.S.W., Ph.D., a superb clinician and scholar who had been with SEFAPP since its beginning. We all mourn our lovely, gracious, alive, intelligent friend who succumbed to cancer way before her time. Donna loved her children, her friends, and psychoanalysis, dedicating herself to the growth and welfare of her patients. She was an exceptional psychoanalytic thinker who wrote and presented many papers over the course of her life. Perhaps nothing better captures Dr. Bentolila’s spirit and determination than to say she wrote a final paper after being diagnosed with a cancer she knew she could not overcome and then presented it in early November, already suffering the ravages of the disease.

Donna Bentolila was a psychoanalyst in private practice in Miami and Boca Raton. She is one of SEFAPP’s past-Presidents and long served on the SEFAPP Board. She was a member of the Florida Psychoanalytic Center, as well as a member of both the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Bentolila received the Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator Award from The International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education and the Distinguished Analyst Award from the Southeast Florida Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology. She was also the recipient of the Erik Eriksen Scholarship at the Austen Riggs Center.

Her loss will leave a gaping wound for her family, her friends, her colleagues, and for psychoanalysis itself.