Paul H. Seton M.D.

Paul H. Seton, psychoanalyst

Paul Harold Seton, M.D., a retired psychoanalyst and teacher at the Smith College School of Social Work, died in hospice on May 22, 2012. He was 88. The cause of death was pneumonia.

Dr. Seton was born and raised in New York. He attended the Fieldston School in the Bronx, then Harvard College. His education was disrupted by World War II, in which he served in the 137th Signal Radio Intelligence Co 9th Army, enlisting in 1943. After graduating from Harvard College, he pursued graduate studies in medicine at Yale, followed by formal psychiatric fellowships at Boston Psychopathic Hospital (1955), then Austen Riggs Center (1957) in Stockbridge.

In 1957, he moved to Northampton where he settled with his wife Cynthia Propper Seton and raised his family. He became the director of counseling services at Smith College; he also taught at the Smith College School of Social Work for many years, while maintaining a private psychoanalytic practice in town.

He is survived by his children, Anthony Seton of Marin, Calif., Julia Seton of London, England, Margaret Seton of Boston, Jennifer Grogan of Westwood, and Nora Seton Zabriskie of Houston, Texas. Six grandchildren also survive him.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in his name to the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, MA, Cynthia Propper Seton Papers.