Dana Birksted-Breen 12/7/1946–1/6/2024

With the death of Dana Birksted-Breen, we lost a prominent psychoanalyst, a hugely creative author who had the capacity to be both immensely knowledgeable about psychoanalytic theory and a great clinician. She was a serious intellectual with an academic background that, together with her bilingualism, compounded her interest in languages and cultural traditions. Dana possessed an inquisitive mind; she was also a great listener, always interested in and respectful of what her patients, her colleagues and her supervisees thought. She was very much appreciated and loved by many, as well as respected throughout the analytic world.

Dana was born in the United States, where her parents were living after their families emigrated from Russia and Poland. Her grandparents came from Russia (Vitebsk) and from Poland (Vilnius, now part of Lithuania) and around 1910 emigrated to the US to escape from the increasingly frequent pogroms. Dana’s mother was born in New York. She was a psychiatric social worker who did a master’s degree at New York University (NYU). Her paternal family arrived in Ellis Island in 1910. Dana’s father was an economist who also studied at NYU. In those days there were quotas for Jewish people who could study at university. Her parents were part of those quotas. Julian Breen worked at the Distribution Committee – the American Jewish Welfare Programme helping with the distribution of money to Jewish people coming from the camps. Dana felt that her Jewish cultural heritage was an important part of her.1 When Dana was nine months old, just after WWII, her father got a job in Paris. Julian, his wife Mary Breen, Dana, and her older brother moved to Paris.

Whilst her parents spoke English to her, Dana always replied in French.2 However, when she visited her grandmother in New York, Dana did speak in English to her. An important influence on Dana was her aunt Nan Lurie (1906–1985), who was an American printmaker and engraver (born in Odessa), and was well known for