Barbara Low (psychoanalyst)

Barbara Low (29 July 1874[1] – 25 December 1955) was one of the first British psychoanalysts, and an early pioneer of analytic theory in England.

Not to be confused with Barbara Low (biochemist).

Barbara Low
Born
Alice Leonora Low

(1874-07-29)29 July 1874
London, England
Died25 December 1955(1955-12-25) (aged 81)
London, England
NationalityEnglish
Alma materUniversity College London
Known forFounder member of the British Psychoanalytical Society
Nirvana principle
Scientific career
FieldsPsychoanalysis

Training and contributions

Low was born in London and named Alice Leonora, the eleventh and last child of Therese (née Schacherl) and Maximillian Loewe, who moved to Britain following Loewe's part in the failed 1848 uprising in Hungary. Her family was Jewish.[2] Her brothers, Sidney James Mark Low and Maurice Low, and her sister, Frances Helena Low, were journalists.[3]

Low attended the Frances Mary Buss School and graduated from University College London, before training as a teacher at the Maria Grey Training College. She later went to Berlin for analysis with Hanns Sachs, and became a founder member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She remained active in the society, serving as librarian, and encouraging wider public involvement for the society during World War II.[4] Having led the welcoming committee for Austrian analysts in 1938,[5] Low supported Anna Freud and Edward Glover in the wartime controversial discussions.[6]

In her 1920 book Psycho-Analysis. A Brief Account of the Freudian Theory,[7] she introduced the concept of the Nirvana principle[8] (German: Nirwanaprinzip)[9] for indicating the organism's tendency to keep stimuli to a minimum level. The term was taken up immediately by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.[10][8][9]

See also

References
  1. Julie Anne Greer (June 2014). "Learning from linked lives: narrativising the individual and group biographies of the guests at the 25th Jubilee dinner of the British Psychoanalytical Society at The Savoy, London, on 8th March 1939. A prosopographical analysis of the character and influence of the formative and significant figures present at the dinner" (PDF). Southampton Education School, University of Southampton. Retrieved 24 November 2018.
  2. William D. Rubinstein, Michael Jolles, Hilary L. Rubinstein, The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History, Palgrave Macmillan (2011), p. 619.
  3. Alexis Easley, 'Low, Frances Helena (1862–1939)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2018.
  4. B. Maddox, Freud's Wizard (2006) p. 246.
  5. B. Maddox, Freud's Wizard (2006) p. 238.
  6. P. King/R. Steiner eds., The Freud/Klein Controversy 1941-45 (1990).
  7. Barbara Low (2013) [1920]. Psycho-Analysis. A Brief Account of the Freudian Theory. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. p. 73. ISBN 978-1-317-97586-1.
  8. Andrew M. Colman (2008). "nirvana principle". A Dictionary of Psychology – via Oxford Reference. = Andrew M. Colman (2015) [2001]. "nirvana principle (p. 508)". A Dictionary of Psychology (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19105784-7.
  9. Jean Laplanche; Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (2018) [1973]. "Nirvana Principle". The Language of Psychoanalysis. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-92124-7.
  10. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle Archived 1 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine.
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