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At the Washington Psychoanalytic Society and Institute headquarters there is a room where a photograph of each former president of the Society is displayed. Lucile Dooley's photograph is among those in the exhibit. Her appearance matches Noble and Burn-ham's (1969) description of her as “a gentle, scholarly woman” (p. 46). In the picture, 50-year-old Dooley is holding a book. Her unflattering hairstyle and plain, dark suit gave her a stilted, schoolmarmish air. And her eyes have a washed-out, sorrowful look. Most people with whom I have talked, who knew Dooley, remember her as a very quiet, retiring person. Furthermore, George McMillan (1980), Dooley's first cousin once removed, indicated that he had experienced many obstacles in his attempts to put together a biography on her precisely because she had been reclusive. He said “Aunt Lucile … is relatively unknown … I think that was because she was a quiet person who was content to teach” (p. 1).
Behind her reserve, however, Dooley had a bold, incisive, penetrating personality. Indeed, throughout the course of my research, I became increasingly aware that she had consistently been at the cutting edge of the development of psychoanalysis during the first half of this century. Of her many achievements, three, in particular, marked her position in the forefront of the field.
First, in 1909, after having been a mission school teacher in the rural South for several years, 25-year-old Dooley traveled to