Barbara Low

Miss Barbara Low died peacefully in her sleep on Christmas morning 1955, at the age of seventy-eight, at the home in Hampstead Garden Suburb which she had shared during her last two years of poor health and semiretirement with her sister Miss Florence Low. She was a founder-member of the London Association of Psycho-Analysis, bringing to the movement a vigorous trained mind, wide culture, clear thinking, and a notable power of exposition, and becoming well known both as a practising analyst and as a lecturer and interpreter of psycho-analytical thought. Her lectures and writings throughout her life appealed to a wide circle, particularly among teachers and students. She was a pioneer in calling attention to the influence of unconscious factors in education and in educators.

Within the British Psycho-Analytical Society she acted for some years as librarian at the Institute, and was a regular attendant at and frequent participant in discussions at the Society's meetings and at international congresses.

She made a notable contribution to theoretical formulation as the originator of the 'Nirvana Principle', to which Freud referred with approval, acknowledging the suggestion as Miss Low's.

Barbara Low was associated in close friendship and community of ideas with her sister, Mrs. Edith Eder, both of whom predeceased her by some years. It was Dr. Eder who first introduced her to the new science of psycho-analysis, of which he was a pioneer in Great Britain, and which, after training, became her central preoccupation. Her book, Psycho-Analysis: A Brief Account of the Freudian Theory, was first published in 1920 and passed through several editions. It appears to be one of the earliest descriptions in English written for the general public by a psycho-analyst.

Barbara Low had a strong and incisive personality, was a loyal and staunch friend, and a vigorous fighter for principles in which she believed. In recent years, since the British Psycho-Analytical Association has c