Suzanne Hall Vogel died peacefully at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 19, after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 81. She was a psychotherapist at Harvard University Health Services for 27 years, and a field supervisor for Simmons School of Social Work. Prior to coming to Harvard, she worked at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center and McLean Hospital. After her retirement from Harvard, she continued a private practice focusing particularly on helping Japanese in the Boston area struggling with both mental health and cultural adjustment, and she pursued her research on the Japanese family.
“Suzanne was a skilled, compassionate clinician, astute supervisor and a beloved colleague and friend,” notes Ann Porter, a colleague who was once supervised by Vogel, “Among her fellow professionals, she was both highly respected and genuinely loved. Because of her work in Japan, she brought a multi-cultural awareness to our service long before multi-culturalism became a watchword.”
For more than 50 years Vogel was actively engaged in the study of Japanese society and culture. She stressed the importance of Japanese psychological concepts for the understanding of individuals of all cultures. She lectured, wrote, and taught in both the United States and Japan.
She conducted path-breaking research on Japanese families and women. She had just completed a book on Japan’s “professional housewives” of the postwar era at the time of her death. In the book, she builds on her research experience in Japan and her clinical practice as she demonstrates how the different social context in the United States and Japan produces distinct psychological symptoms in the two countries. The book was published this month in Japanese by Minerva Publishing under the title Japan’s Changing Family: 50 Years of Professional Housewives. An English-language version is expected to be published next year.
She first conducted research on the Japanese family with her former husband, Ezra Vogel, resulting in the publication of his book entitled Japan’s New Middle Class (1963). The Vogels intensively interviewed six families in a Tokyo suburb in 1958-60, providing a detailed portrait of Japanese family life at the time. Suzanne maintained relationships with these families for more than half a century. In the new book, Suzanne Vogel tells the life stories of three of the housewives from these families, setting their stories in the context of social changes from 1958 through to the present.
Vogel received a Fulbright Scholarship in 1988 to 1989 to consult with the Social Work and Psychiatry Departments of St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo and to conduct research on family life and mental health in Japan. Subsequently, she spent about six weeks every year supervising social workers at Hasegawa Hospital for almost twenty years. “Sue stressed the importance of understanding the patient – the value of empathy – in cultivating a productive relationship between therapist and patient,” recalls Misato Nishijima, a former colleague from Hasegawa Hospital who went on to translate Vogel’s book into Japanese. “She was so sincere, open, and cheerful that she naturally brought people into her circle.”
Vogel graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Texas, Austin in 1951. She earned a master’s degree in sociology from Northwestern University in 1952, and a master of social work from Simmons College in 1954. She received an award for excellence from the Simmons College School of Social Work Alumni Association.
Vogel is survived by three children – David Vogel of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Steven Vogel of Berkeley, California; and Eve Vogel, of Amherst, Massachusetts – and five grandchildren.
The family plans to arrange a memorial service in August or September.
Charitable contributions can be made to Planned Parenthood, the Union of Concerned Scientists, or the Texas Wesley United Methodist Campus Ministry (2202 Nueces, Austin, TX 78705).