Daniel Offer

Daniel Offer (December 24, 1929 – May 13, 2013) was a psychiatrist and scholar who challenged prevailing beliefs that adolescence is inherently a time of storm and stress.

His Offer Longitudinal Study was one of the first studies of typical youth over time and demonstrated that most pass through adolescence adequately happy and connected to families and others.

This contribution shifted fundamentally how adolescent development was understood scientifically and provoked recognition that theory from patient populations was inadequate.

He is also remembered for his scholarship on normality, the viability of memory, the Offer Self Image Questionnaire and for fostering the field of adolescent developmental studies.

Daniel Offer was born in Berlin, Germany on December 24, 1929.

He is the son of Walter Hirsch, M.D. a pediatrician, and Ilse Hirsch, née Meyer.

He is a grandson of Professor Ludwig Ferdinand Meyer, M.D., a pediatric gastroenterologist and Director of the Emperor and Empress Friedrich Children’s Hospital in Berlin, Germany.

After the rise of Nazism in April 1933, both his father and his grandfather lost their jobs.

The two families immigrated to Palestine in 1936.

Offer grew up in Jerusalem and, in February, 1948, he joined the Palmach (Strike Force) of the Israeli army.

At that time he changed his name from Thomas Edgar Hirsch to Daniel Offer.

He left the Israel Defense Forces as a Staff Sergeant in 1950.

He then attended the University of Rochester, in Rochester, New York.

He continued his education at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, graduating in 1957.

Offer served an internship at the University of Illinois Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois followed by a psychiatric residency at Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, Illinois (1958 to 1961).

Offer was married to Judith Baskin Offer from 1961 until her death in 1976.

In 1963 Offer realized that very little was known about the development of normal (i.e. non-patient) adolescents.

He received eight years of federal grants to study the psychological development of normal adolescents.

In the first phase of the study seventy three boys were selected from two suburban Chicago area high school and followed for eight years.

The major finding for the high school phase was that stability and not turmoil, was the overriding characteristic of normal adolescents.

This finding contradicted the then current notion of normal development.

At that time it was believed that all adolescents go through major turmoil as they move through the high school years.

The four years of the post high school phase of the school substantiated this finding.

Two books resulted from the adolescent phase of the study.

From 1973 to 1990 he served on the faculty of the University of Chicago Medical School, becoming Professor of Psychiatry in 1974.

During that time he was Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry from 1977 to 1987.

In 1979 he married Marjorie Kaiz Offer.

He remained at Michael Reese until 1990.

In 1990 he became Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, attaining emeritus status in 2008.

In 1996-7 94% of the original sample were reinterviewed.

They were now 48.

The original finding held.

All were well adjusted late middle-aged individuals.

The major finding was the discovery that well-adjusted adults do not remember their adolescence accurately.

The data showed that there is essentially no correlation between what the subjects as adults thought and felt about their adolescence and what they actually thought and felt when they were adolescents.

In June, 1999 Daniel Offer began dialysis due to renal failure.

In order to help fellow renal patients navigate the world of dialysis, he wrote with his wife, Marjorie Kaiz Offer and his daughter Susan Offer Szafir a guide to dealing with dialysis.

The book incorporates interviews with nephrologists, nurses, social workers, dieticians, technicians and dialysis patients and their families.

They were married until his death in 2013.

He has three children and six grandchildren.