Includes the paper 'The experience of the skin in early object relations'. Martha Gemmell Dunlop Harris was born in Beith, Ayrshire, the eldest of four children of a farming family of Covenanter traditions. They removed to Sussex when she was eight and her education was at East Grindstead Grammar School, University College, London (English) and Oxford (Psychology). She taught in secondary schools for some years before training as a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic and as a psychoanalyst of adults and children at the British Psycho-Analytical Society. She practiced privately as a psychoanalyst and was Principal of the Dept. of Children and Parents at the Tavistock from the 1960's until her retirement. She taught widely in Europe, North and South America and India. Her most popular book, Thinking about Infants and Young Children (Clunie Press) has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Her husband Roland Harris was a poet, English scholar, teacher in secondary schools, and latterly worked at the Ministry of Education and, until his death, at Brunel Universtity. Her two daughters are both English scholars. Esther Bick was born in Poland and found her way to Switzerland during the war where she did her Ph.D. under Charlotte Buhler before coming to England to train as a psycho-analyst. She worked closely with Melanie Klein and initiated the Child Psychotherapy Training at the Tavistock Clinic which Martha Harris continued to nurture following her retirement. |
