Obituary: Eva Spitz-Blum: psychologist, rancher, researcher

Eva Maria Spitz-Blum of Ladera, a psychologist who did research around the world on folklore, shamanism, alcohol and drugs, before moving to Skyline where she took up ranching, was honored at a memorial service Sunday at the Stanford Faculty Club. Ms. Spitz-Blum died peacefully at Stanford Hospital on May 2, just a month after she celebrated her 90th birthday on April 1.

Born in Budapest in 1919, Eva Spitz spent her first 19 years moving around Europe to avoid the political upheavals leading up to World War II. Her father was Rene Spitz, an early psychoanalyst and disciple of Sigmund Freud.

After fleeing Budapest when Eva was 3 months old because of a revolution, the family lived in Trieste, Vienna, Berlin and Paris. “She was a girl on the run,” says her daughter, Lisa Duhl of Berkeley.

In 1938, Dr. Spitz and his family left seething Europe for New York and a new life in the United States.

Her education was almost as broken up as her living conditions. In Paris she studied at the Sorbonne. In the U.S., she graduated from Barnard College, and put in stints at Harvard and the University of Washington, before moving to California and Stanford. “She was incredibly adaptable,” says Ms. Duhl.

Meanwhile, she had met and married Warner Shippee of Rhode Island. They lived in Virginia, where she worked with the legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead. The couple had a son and daughter, born in 1944 and 1945. In 1949, Ms. Spitz, by then a single mother, moved to California and began her 60-year association with Stanford. In 1955, she received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a minor in anthropology.

That year, Ms. Spitz and her new fiance, Richard H.D. Blum, bought a house on Whiskey Hill Road. There they pursued at least three careers: research into drugs, alcohol and mental health at Stanford and other local institutions; related studies around the world focusing on folklore, shamanism and drugs; and running two ranches in the mountains west of Skyline.

She held her first post-doctoral fellowship at the Menlo Park veterans hospital, where she served on the same ward with Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Later she and Richard Blum co-directed research at Stanford into the psychodynamics of the use and effects of mind-altering drugs. She was associate editor of the “Encyclopedia of Alcohol Problems,” and published widely on the subject.

The Blums pursued their research interests into foreign lands, including Greece, South America, the Middle East, and Central Asia. They particularly loved Greece and published books and articles on Greek folklore, and rural health.

Their studies of the dynamics of drug use took the Blums to Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their work in Afghanistan, concerning control of opium poppies, ended with the Soviet invasion in 1979, Richard Blum notes. Meanwhile, she founded the Afghan Wildlife Society in hopes of protecting the country’s dwindling wildlife.

As some of the first foreigners to enter one of the remote tribal provinces, the Blums were invited to join the Explorers Club – an activity she enjoyed for the rest of her life. In 1995, at the age of 76, she made her last anthropological research expedition, Ms. Duhl recalls. “She and a few Explorers Club members trekked into Ecuadorian Amazonia to study the healing practices of the women shamans there.”

Starting about 1969, the Blums took up serious ranching and bought two properties in the Santa Cruz Mountains They raised picturesque Scotch Highland cattle – shaggy red with long horns – on the Volcano Ranch on Langley Hill. Farther to the south at Shingle Mill off Highway 9, they raised a flock of Southdown sheep.

She became active in the South Skyline Association, serving on the board and helping plan emergency response.

The Blums separated about 1984 and divorced a few years later. She moved down the hill, from Shingle Mill to Ladera, in 2005; he still lives at Shingle Mill.

Still unfinished is her project to write a biography of her father, to be called “Through a Daughter’s Eyes: The Work and Life of a Pioneer Psychoanalyst, Rene A. Spitz.”

Ms. Spitz-Blum is widely remembered as a magnificent hostess. She provided plentiful and lavish meals and delicious desserts, accompanied by wide-ranging, lively and stimulating conversation, and warm and considerate hospitality, says Ms. Duhl,

Ms. Spitz-Blum is survived by a son, John Shippee of Atlanta; a daughter, Lisa Duhl of Berkeley; one grandchild; and two great-grandchildren.

The family suggests donations to the Eva M. Spitz Blum Family Legacy Fund of the Archives of the History of American Psychology, c/o The University of Akron Foundation, Akron, Ohio, 44325-2603.