Heinrich Winnik trained as a psychoanalyst in Vienna but left Europe for Palestine to escape Nazi persecution. He later became noted in Israel for his research work on the Holocaust.
Little is known about Mrs Hannah Ries, although she appears to have been one of the many European psychoanalysts who emigrated to the UK prior to the Second World War, with the assistance of colleagues from the British Psychoanalytical Society. She was elected to associate membership of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1940 and to full membership in 1946. She moved to Los Angeles, USA, around 1964.
Her dates of birth and death are not known, but she was noted to be aged eighty or over in 1966 (minutes of the Council of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 7 Feb 1966) and her death was reported in the proceedings of a business meeting of the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1975.
Catherine Elizabeth 'Karin' Stephen was born in 1890. She was a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge and married Adrian Stephen (brother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell) just before the First World War; as conscientious objectors, they spent the war working on a dairy farm. After the war, they both became interested in training as psychoanalysts. In order to qualify, they trained as doctors and went into analysis with James Glover until his untimely death in 1926, when Karin went to Sylvia Payne and Adrian to Ella Sharpe. They were accepted as associate members of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1927; Adrian became a full member in 1930 and Karin in 1931.
Karin entered private practice as a psychoanalyst. She gave the first course of lectures on psychoanalysis ever given at Cambridge University; these were highly successful and formed the basis of a book for medical students. She was active on the Public Lectures Committee of the British Psychoanalytical Society but was sometimes critical of the society and contributed to the Extraordinary Business Meetings held during the Controversial Discussions.
During the Second World War, her husband, angered by anti-semitism, abandoned his pacifist stance and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps as an army psychiatrist. Karin became a driver in the Queen’s Messenger Flying Squad Food Convoy. Karin Stephen suffered from increasingly severe deafness and from manic-depression; following the death of Adrian Stephen in 1948, her health deteriorated and she committed suicide in 1953.
Ignacio Matte Blanco was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, noted for his work on logic and the unconscious.
He was born in Santiago on 3 Oct 1908 and trained as a psychoanalyst in Chile and England, becoming a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1938. He moved to study in the USA two years later and became Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Duke University. He returned to Chile in 1944, where he was instrumental in establishing the Chilean Psychoanalytic Association and was appointed as Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Psychiatric Clinic at the medical school of the University of Chile.
In 1966, he moved to Rome, Italy, where he continued to practice psychoanalysis and psychotherapy until his death on 11 Jan 1995.
Nancy Born is the pseudonym adopted by the writer of these diaries, which begin with a summary of events in her life leading up to her analysis with D W Winnicott.
She obtained a BA honours degree at Oxford University and taught for two years in a girls' boarding school near London. She then lived in Budapest for ten years, where she taught English and had her first analysis. She returned to England in 1937 and worked with D W Winnicott at Paddington Green Children's Hospital until the start of the Second World War. She was accepted in 1938 as a student for training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and later qualified as a psychoanalyst. During the war, she worked as a psychiatric social worker in a child guidance clinic in the north of England. After the war, she returned to London and entered into psychoanalytic practice, as well as returning to work at Paddington Green Children's Hospital as a psychotherapist, again working with Winnicott.
She re-entered analysis in 1946 and, following the death of her analyst, became a patient of Winnicott in 1947.
The dates of birth and death of Nancy Born are not known but she was known to be deceased when the manuscript was transferred to the archives in 1986.
Thomas Freeman was born in Glasgow in 1919. He was educated at the Belfast Royal Academy. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, where he trained as a parachutist and saw service with the airbourne forces. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of major and began his distinguished career as a psychiatrist and trained in psychoanalysis. His training analyst was Dorothy Burlingham, a close friend and colleague of Anna Freud.
Dr Freeman gained enormous clinical experience through work as consultant psychiatrist in large mental hospitals in Scotland and Northern Ireland. From 1952 to 1965, he worked at Glasgow's Royal Mental Hospital and the Lansdowne Clinic, where he made detailed studies of psychotic patients, which were significant and influential contributions to psychoanalysis. In 1965, he left Glasgow to take up a post at the Royal Dundee Liff Hospital. He returned to Northern Ireland in 1968, when he became consultant psychiatrist at Holywell Hospital, County Antrim.
Whilst continuing his work at the mental hospitals, Dr Freeman was also appointed consultant psychiatrist to the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic in London, where he worked closely with Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham. He adapted Anna Freud’s schema for diagnostic assessment of childhood psychological disorders to patients with psychotic disorders. He completed no fewer than 20 profiles using the schema and visited Hampstead on regular intervals to discuss this work. Two important books cam into being as a result of this devoted study: ‘A Psychoanalytic Study of the Psychoses’ (1973) and ‘Childhood Psychopathology and Adult Psychoses (1976).
Dr Freeman made significant contributions to psychoanalytic training. In his earlier years he encouraged many people to travel to London to train as psychoanalysts. His achievements in later life were also remarkable. After retiring from the NHS, as the sole psychoanalyst in Northern Ireland, he set up a training scheme for psychoanalytic psychotherapy. He both analysed and supervised the candidates, as well as arranging for further supervision in England. As a result of his endeavors, in 1989, the Northern Ireland Association for the Study of Psychoanalysis was set up.
During his career, Thomas Freeman published eight books, over one hundred papers and more than thirty chapters.
Harold Christian was a dentist in Hampstead and knew the intellectual community there in the 1930s to 1960s. He had contact with various psychoanalysts including Edward Glover, with whom he had a long friendship.
Masud Khan was born into a wealthy family in the Punjab in India in 1924. He was the second child of Fazaldad Khan, his father's fourth marriage to Khursheed Begum. In 1942 he began study at the university of Punjab, specialising in English literature. The following year his younger sister died from an incorrect dose of medication for tuberculosis. His father died the following year.
Hoping to deal with these traumatic events Khan began an analysis with an Indian psychologist who had trained in the United States. It was suggested that he undergo a full analysis and in 1946 he applied for and was accepted by the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London. He began analysis with Ella Freeman Sharpe who died the following year in 1947. He continued with John Rickman until 1951 when he too died.
Khan qualified at the age of 26 in 1950 and became a Member in 1955. He then started analysis with Winnicott with whom he would develop a close relationship as editor of many of Winnicott's collected papers. As well as being Librarian of the British Society he played an important role as Reviews and Associate Editor for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and as Editor for the International Library series.
In the last years of Khan's life his reputation was marred by scandal.