BRAIKER, Harriet B. 1948-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 22, 1948, in Los Angeles, CA; died of respiratory failure as a complication from pneumonia, January 10, 2004, in Pasadena, CA. Psychologist and author. Braiker was best known for her popular books and lectures on stress management for women. An alumna of the University of California—Los Angeles, she did her undergraduate and graduate work there, finishing with a doctorate in 1975. During her early career, she taught psychology at the Windward School in Santa Monica, California, from 1972 to 1973, and was a clinical intern at San Fernando Valley Child Guidance Center for the next two years. She then joined the Rand Corp., where she researched the problems engendered by alcohol and drug abuse in studies for U.S. government agencies and the Air Force. After being fully licensed in 1980, she opened a private practice in Los Angeles. Braiker became interested in stress management in the 1980s, when news about Type A personalities in men—those who are workaholics—started to become a concern in America. Braiker believed, though, that stress in women was even more severe in many cases because of increasing pressure on women to not only be successful at work but also in the home as wives, mothers, and perfect hostesses. An article she published on the subject for Working Woman magazine in 1984 generated such a large reader response that she turned it into her first bestselling book, The Type E Woman: How to Overcome the Stress of Being Everything to Everybody (1986). This was followed by several more similar books, including Getting Up When You're Feeling Down: A Woman's Guide to Overcoming and Preventing Depression (1988) and The Disease to Please: Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome (2001). Finding a wide audience and appearing on such television programs as The Oprah Winfrey Show, Braiker offered her expertise as director of the Praxis Training Group management consulting firm from 1985 to 1993 and, beginning in 1987, as senior vice president of the public relations firm Lexicon Communications. More recently, she published The September 11 Syndrome: Anxious Days and Sleepless Nights (2002) to help people get over the stress caused by the 2001 terrorist attacks.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, January 14, 2004, Section 1, p. 10.

Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2004, p. B10.

New York Times, January 21, 2004, p. A27.