Lauretta Bender, MD was a child neuropsychiatrist who was born in 1897. Her father was an attorney. She repeated first grade 3 times, she was thought to be mentally retarded because she reversed letters in reading and writing. She eventually received her B.S. and M.A. in biology from the University of Chicago and an M.D. from Iowa State. She had an affair with married psychoanalyst Dr. Paul Schilder. She eventually married and was a widow when her last child was born. She married again at age 70. Best known for her Visual Motor Gestalt Test described in an 1938 monograph. She worked at Bellview Hospital in NYC from 1930-1956. Lauretta Bender wrote in 1938 a Monograph entitled : A Visual Motor Gestalt Test and Its Clinical Use. The test consist of reproducing 9 figures that are printed on cards. The figures were derived from the work of the famous Gestalt psychologist Wertheimer. The Bender-Gestalt test as it is now often called, is typically among the top five test used by clinical psychologists. It measures perceptual motor skills, perceptual motor development and gives a indication of neuroloical intactness. It has been used a personality test and a test of emotional problems. Scoring system include Elizabeth M. Koppitz's system for Children (1963) Pascal & Suttell system for Adults (1951); Hutt & Briskin Projective personality feature system (1960); Arthur Canter's Background Interference Procedure (BIP) test for organicty (1976) and Patrica Lacks who uses it as a screening device for brain damage. Bender herself said it was " a method of evaluating maturation of gestalt functioning children 4-11…. brain functioning by which it responds to a given constellation of stimuli as a whole, the response being a motor process of patterning the perceived gestalt." Bender was a contemporary of David Wechsler, creator of intelliegnce tests, who also was at Bellview Hospital.