Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham b. Dorothy Trimble Tiffany (born October 11, 1891 in New York City , † November 19, 1979 in London ) was an American child psychoanalyst and educator. She had a lifelong friendship and partnership with the child psychoanalyst Anna Freud . She became known through her collaboration with Freud on child analysis. During the 1960s and 1970s, she led the Research Group on the Study of Blind Children at the Hampstead Clinic in London. Her article "To be blind in a sighted world" , published in 1979 in the annual report of the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child , is a milestone in empathic scientific observation.

Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham is the daughter of the artist Louis Comfort Tiffany and the granddaughter of Charles Lewis Tiffany , the founder of Tiffany & Co.

Life

Dorothy Burlingham with Robert (1915)

Dorothy Trimble Tiffany grew up as the daughter of the jeweler and glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany and his wife Mary Woodbridge Goddard in New York. On September 24, 1914, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, she married the New York surgeon and Harvard graduate Dr. Robert Burlingham (1888–1938), from whom she had four children; however, the couple separated in 1921 because of her husband's bipolar disorder , who suffered from manic-depressive states and later eventually committed suicide. Burlingham had to raise their four children alone. One of their children, their son Bob, developed a skin condition diagnosed as having psychosomatic origin. The illness came at a time when the new field of psychoanalysis was becoming more widely known in Europe and the United States.

In 1925, Burlingham moved to Vienna with her four children, prompted by the hope of her son's psychoanalytic recovery . Soon afterwards she began an analysis with Theodor Reik and met Anna Freud, who was already working as a child analyst at the time, and who then accepted all four Burlingham children as her patients. As a result of the treatment, the son's skin disease soon disappeared. As a result of these events, Dorothy Burlingham decided to become a lay analyst herself and, in preparation for this, to conduct a full analysis with Sigmund Freud , although she was now personally close to his daughter.

In 1970 your son Robert Jr., whom Dorothy had treated by Anna Freud in his youth, died as a result of excessive alcohol consumption. Her daughter Mabbie, who was also treated by Anna Freud, came to London in 1973 and died in Anna Freud's house as a result of an overdose of sleeping pills. In an interview, Dorothy's grandson and son of Robert Jr., Michael Burlingham, said: “[with the location of the suicide] a very clear signal has been sent. A suicide is always also a politicized statement, and that [Mabbie] had chosen Sigmund Freud's house for it and not her own apartment, was undoubtedly to be understood as a clear statement ”.

plant

Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham moved to London in 1938 with the Freuds, who were fleeing anti-Semitism from the National Socialists . After Sigmund Freud's death the following year, she settled at 2 Maresfield Gardens, near Anna Freud, who lived at 20 Maresfield Gardens. A year later she moved into the Freudian family house, where she lived until her death. The two women, who were in partnership for the next forty years, founded the Hampstead War Nurseries during World War II , a home for war children and orphans. Their work there led them to the publication of Infants Without Families in 1943. Together with Helen Ross, both founded the Hampstead Clinic in 1951 , a center that “set out to provide therapy and support for families to treat mentally disturbed and handicapped children, regardless of their problems, social background or past, while providing aspiring analysts with the most balanced and diverse training possible. ”Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham and Anna Freud both worked at the Hampstead Clinic until retirement.

Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham died in London in 1979. Her remains rest in the Golders Green Crematorium in London alongside those of Anna Freud (who died in 1982) and others of the Freudian family, including Sigmund Freud .

Publications

  • Dorothy Burlingham, from d. American. by Anna Freud u. Linde Salber: Labyrinth Childhood: Contributions to the psychoanalysis of the child . Ed .: Linde Salber. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1989, ISBN 3-596-42256-6 .
  • Dorothy Burlingham, Anna Freud: Homeless Children. To use psychoanalyt. Knowledge on d. Parenting . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1982, ISBN 3-596-27314-5 .
  • Dorothy Burlingham, Anna Freud: institutional children . (circa 1970).
  • Dorothy Burlingham, Anna Freud: Children of War. Annual report d. War Children's Home Hampstead Nurseries . Imago Publishing Co., 1949.

literature

  • Burlingham, Michael: The Last Tiffany. A Biography of Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham. , 1989, New York.
  • Freud, Anna; Kennedy, Hansi; York, Clifford: In Memoriam Dorothy Burlingham 1891-1979. In: Psa. Study Child 35 (1980), pp. IX-XXII.
  • Ulrike Hoffmann-Richter : Dorothy Burlingham . In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , p. 101f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ BBC Interview with Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self: The Engineering of Consent. (1h55m00s), youtube.com ( Memento from December 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Burlingham, Dorothy Tiffany
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tiffany, Dorothy Trimble (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 19th November 1979
Place of death London