Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham (1891–1979)

Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham died at her home in her 89th year on 19 November 1979. During a busy professional life spanning more than fifty years she made a number of outstanding theoretical and clinical contributions to psychoanalysis; but her work was not always as widely recognized, outside certain specialist fields, as it should have been. No doubt her retiring disposition contributed to this state of affairs; but there can be no question of the enduring quality of her industry and of the impact of her thinking on all those who were fortunate enough to know her or to be taught or trained by her.

I came to know Mrs Burlingham comparatively late in her long and productive life. It was, for me, an uncommonly rewarding association, in the course of which I learned a great deal and in which acquaintance broadened into friendship. This is not, however, a personal memoir, but a short general appreciation; and although, in the course of it, her scientific work is given major emphasis, I do not think that those who knew Mrs Burlingham will be likely to forget the generous and empathic personality which both activated and informed her scientific contributions.

She herself has pointed, in her diverse contributions to the literature, to a primary interest, a unifying theme, which both informs and is informed by the careful and detailed clinical observations in which the body of her work abounds: namely, the relationship between mother and child. Such an interest may sound unexceptional to those who do not know her work; but for her it was never a commonplace; and at no time did it embrace any attempt to reduce normality and pathology to mere reflections and elaborations of speculative constructs concerning early life. Indeed, her deep and abiding interest in this field sprang in large measure from her experience in the analysis of latency children where she was fascinated by her encounter with residua of what she called 'rather obscure areas of contact between mother an