Meissner, William W.

Fr. William W. Meissner, SJ, a Jesuit priest, doctor and psychoanalyst, and a long-time faculty member at Boston College and Harvard Medical School, died April 16, 2010 at the Campion Center in Weston after a brief illness.

Fr. Meissner, who was 79, was a Jesuit priest for 49 years. He had been University Professor of Psychoanalysis at Boston College since 1987, and served as a University Trustee from 1979 until 1987. He also had been a member of the clinical psychiatry faculty at Harvard Medical School for nearly 20 years.

“Fr. Meissner had a unique and apostolic career as a physician, a psychiatrist, a professor and as a Jesuit,” said Boston College Chancellor J. Donald Monan, SJ. “His scholarly contributions – both through writing and teaching – were exceptional.

A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Fr. Meissner received his academic degrees from Saint Louis University and Woodstock College prior to his ordination as a Jesuit priest in 1961. He later graduated from Harvard Medical School and served an internship in psychiatry at Mount Auburn Hospital and a medical residency at Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston.

From 1968 through 1987, he was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, serving as clinical professor of psychiatry. He also was a faculty member and training and supervising analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and, in 1980, was a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Throughout his career Fr. Meissner, a widely-recognized expert on psychoanalytic theory, served on numerous advisory and evaluation committees in the mental health services sector as well as on the editorial boards of various academic journals.

In 2001, he received the William C. Bier Award from the American Psychological Association in recognition of his work in the field of psychoanalysis.

Fr. Meissner had planned to retire from the Boston College faculty on July 1.

A wake for Fr. Meissner will be held on Tuesday, April 20 from 4 to 7 p.m. at St. Mary’s Hall on the Boston College campus, and a Funeral Mass at St. Ignatius Church in Chestnut Hill at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. Burial will be in the Jesuit Cemetery of the Jesuit Martyrs’ Shrine in Auriesville, N.Y. Funeral arrangements are by Brady & Fallon Funeral Home of Boston.

Fr. Meissner is survived by a sister, Gretchen Meissner of Buffalo.