{"id":94122,"date":"2024-07-13T23:18:09","date_gmt":"2024-07-13T23:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/13\/dr-ruth-westheimer-sex-therapist-has-died-aged-96\/"},"modified":"2024-07-13T23:18:09","modified_gmt":"2024-07-13T23:18:09","slug":"dr-ruth-westheimer-sex-therapist-has-died-aged-96","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/13\/dr-ruth-westheimer-sex-therapist-has-died-aged-96\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Ruth Westheimer: Sex therapist has died aged 96"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dr Ruth Westheimer, who was one of the most famous sex therapists in the United States, has died at the age of 96.<\/p>\n

The media star and best-selling author died on Friday at her New York City home, surrounded by her family, according to her publicist and friend Pierre Lehu.<\/p>\n

As a 50-something psychiatrist, Westheimer found fame on radio, television and in bookstores during the 1980s by talking honestly in public about once-taboo, bedroom topics.<\/p>\n

The 4ft 7in tall celebrity, with a distinctive German<\/strong><\/a> accent who backed contraception, encouraged an open dialogue on previously closeted issues which affected her audience of millions.<\/p>\n

Westheimer, who fled Nazi Germany as a child, had a non-judgmental approach to what two consenting adults did in the privacy of their home and her one recurring theme was there was nothing to be ashamed of.<\/p>\n

It was her extensive knowledge, coupled with her humorous manner, that catapulted her local radio show, Sexually Speaking, into the national spotlight in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n

“Tell him you’re not going to initiate,” she told a concerned caller in 1982.<\/p>\n

“Tell him that Dr Westheimer said that you’re not going to die if he doesn’t have sex for one week.”<\/p>\n

Her radio success opened new doors, and in 1983 she wrote the first of more than 40 books: Dr Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex, demystifying sex with both rationality and humour. There was even a board game, Dr Ruth’s Game of Good Sex.<\/p>\n

Also in the 1980s, she stood up for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out for the LGBT+ community.<\/p>\n

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Holocaust orphan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Westheimer was the result of an unplanned, out-of-wedlock pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Born Karola Ruth Siegel on 4 June 1928 in Frankfurt, Germany, she was an only child in a wealthy Orthodox Jewish family.<\/p>\n

Her father Julius was a successful businessman who married her mother Irma, a housekeeper for the family, after she became pregnant.<\/p>\n

Westheimer was 10 when the Nazis came to her home and took away her father.<\/p>\n

Six weeks later, her mother sent her to an orphanage in Switzerland.<\/p>\n

In 1941, Westheimer stopped receiving letters from her parents and she later learned they had been murdered in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

Read more from Sky News:<\/strong>
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Bomb blast<\/strong><\/p>\n

On her 20th birthday, Siegel was severely injured in a bomb blast in Jerusalem that left her feet severely damaged and in danger of amputation. She defied the odds and made a full recovery.<\/p>\n

She married an Israeli soldier and they moved to Paris and went to college. They later divorced, and she headed to New York with a boyfriend, married him, had a daughter and continued her education.<\/p>\n

After another divorce, she wed Manfred Westheimer, an engineer she met in 1961. That marriage produced a son and lasted until Manfred’s death in 1997.<\/p>\n

After earning a doctorate in education, Westheimer went to work for Planned Parenthood and caught the attention of a New York radio station executive when she lectured broadcast officials on contraception.<\/p>\n

That led to a weekly 15-minute midnight radio programme in 1980 called Sexually Speaking.<\/p>\n

Westheimer is survived by her children, Miriam and Joel, and four grandchildren.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Dr Ruth Westheimer, who was one of the most famous sex therapists in the United States, has died at the age of 96. The media star and best-selling author died on Friday at her New York City home, surrounded by her family, according to her publicist and friend Pierre Lehu. As a 50-something psychiatrist, Westheimer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/24\/07\/768x432\/skynews-dr-ruth-westheimer_6625559.jpg?20240713165927","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5406,6836,3141,5150,80217,80216],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94124,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94122\/revisions\/94124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}