Ruth Westheimer Video | Celebrity Interview and Paparazzi

Ruth Westheimer (born June 4, 1928) is an American sex therapist, media personality, and author. Best known as Dr. Ruth, the New York Times described her as a "Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s. She ushered in the new age of freer, franker talk about sex on radio and television—and was endlessly parodied for her limitless enthusiasm and for having an accent only a psychologist could have." Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel in Wiesenfeld (Karlstadt), Germany, the only child of Orthodox Jews, Julius Siegel and Irma Siegel née Hanauer. In... MORE

Ruth Westheimer (born June 4, 1928) is an American sex therapist, media personality, and author. Best known as Dr. Ruth, the New York Times described her as a "Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s. She ushered in the new age of freer, franker talk about sex on radio and television—and was endlessly parodied for her limitless enthusiasm and for having an accent only a psychologist could have." Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel in Wiesenfeld (Karlstadt), Germany, the only child of Orthodox Jews, Julius Siegel and Irma Siegel née Hanauer. In January 1939 she was sent to Switzerland by her mother and grandmother after her father was taken by the Nazis. There she came of age in an orphanage, and stopped receiving her parents' letters in September 1941. In 1945, Westheimer learned that her parents had been murdered in the Holocaust, possibly at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Westheimer decided to emigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine. There, at 17, she "first had sexual intercourse on a starry night, in a haystack—without contraception." She later told the New York Times that "I am not happy about that, but I know much better now LESS