Robert Norman Rapoport was born in Brockton, Massachusetts. He received an MA degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and a PhD at the Department of Social Relations of Harvard University for his thesis on the changing values of Navaho Indians. He studied mental illness in a Canadian county, then held several positions, from assistant to Professor. In 1954 he became Research Director in the Social Rehabilitation Unit of Belmont Hospital, in Surrey, England. He worked under the psychiatrist Maxwell Jones, who was developing the concept of a therapeutic community. This experience yielded more than a dozen papers, several of which he wrote with his wife, Rhona Sofer Rapoport, a South African sociologist and psychoanalyst. In 1957 Rapoport returned to the U.S. to attend Harvard University and then Boston College. In 1960, he published his first book, Community as Doctor. In 1965 he returned to England to become Senior Social Scientist at the Tavistock Institute in London. He and his wife became interested in working on gender and family issues, which led to several more books. In 1973 he and Rhona established the Institute for Family and Environmental Research. In the 1980s, Rapoport moved to New York City to work in children's mental health issues. In the 1990s he became Visiting Professor at Surrey University.