Joan Riviere and the Masquerade

In 1919 an act was passed in Britain that made the professions open to both men and women, thus unbarring the professions from sexual discrimination. As a consequence, the place of women in society and in the professions became more secure. Coincidentally 1919 was the year in which the British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by Ernest Jones. Many members of the Society in its early years were British women who to a remarkable extent contributed to the development of psychoanalysis in England. They brought fresh insights and new understandings to the psychology of women. One of these women was Joan Riviere, founder member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, Freud's most able and sensitive translator and principle interpreter of Melanie Klein's theories and work. But, most importantly and what I want to address here, is that she was an original thinker who contributed much to psychoanalytic theory.

British women had long been interested in social issues and in social reform, and this was particularly the case at the end of the Edwardian era. Joan Riviere left a diary of important events in her life that took place between the years 1905 and 1919. Her diary shows that she had taken part in suffrage meetings and demonstrations, that she was interested in the movement for divorce reform and that she considered applying for the post of secretary to the Legal Defence Society. She attended meetings of the Medico-Psychological Society where she met the suffrage writer May Sinclair.1 The latter was one of those eminent professional and charitable gentry who formed the sponsoring group for the Brunswick Square Clinic formed in 1913 (Boll 1962). This clinic was designed to provide, in particular, outpatient psychotherapeutic help especially for women at a time when such help was available only within hospital settings. Although the clinic was not explicitly feminist in theory, it was an institution that became a centre