Thus article discusses several ideas of the Scottish psychiatrist Ian D. Suttie concerning childhood and the nature of mental suffering. Suttie is seen as the prototype of a British Independent psychoanalyst because he combined a thorough knowledge of Freudian theory with a “structure of feeling” grounded in both British psychology and the Hungarian psychoanalytic tradition originating with Ferenczi. The author also highlights how a number of prominent contemporaries in psychology and psychiatry, including William McDougall and W. H. R. Rivers, played a significant role in the development of such a “structure of feeling” in British psychoanalysis.