Marianne Kris died of a heart attack in London on Sunday, November 23, 1980. She was born in Vienna on May 17, 1900. Her father, Dr. Oskar Rie, was the pediatrician for the Freud children and had been an associate of Freud's in an output neurology clinic for children.
Dr. Kris received her MD from the University of Vienna in 1925. Thereupon, she moved to Berlin for psychiatric and psychoanalytic training under the leadership of Franz Alexander. She returned to Vienna in 1927, where she married Dr. Ernst Kris the same year. Fleeing from the Nazis, she and her husband with their two children, Anna and Anton, moved to England in 1938. They came to the U.S.A. in 1940, and were associated with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Institute at Columbia University. She also became a Charter Member and Life Fellow of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry.
Beginning her association with Milton Senn and Sally Provence at the New York Hospital and Cornell University Medical College, Marianne Kris joined her husband Ernst in moving to Yale's Child Study Center in 1953. Soon after Dr. Ernst's death in 1957, she became one of the Managing Editors of the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. In 1965, Marianne Kris became the first president of the Association for Child Psychoanalysis.
Dr. Kris taught extensively and wrote sparingly. Her teaching and writing have had a steady, continuing influence. Those who study the most difficult and complex scientific process and methodology, that of prediction, turn repeatedly to her report, “The Use of Prediction in a Longitudinal Study.”
At the memorial service held for Dr. Kris on December 7, 1980 in New York, Peter Neubauer, M.D., spoke of the closeness of her friends, collaborators and students; Charles Feigelson, M.D., spoke of her clinical and teaching brilliance; and Albert Somit, M.D. spoke of Marianne and Ernst Kris' work at the Child Study Center at Yale. Dr. Solnit concluded his encomium by saying: “With her gracious intelligence, playful humour, deft hands and lively spirit, Marianne Kris was an astute observer of life. She was wonderful as a seamstress—mending clothes and making drapes. She was a fun-loving life player with unflagging loyalty to her family, friends, patients, students and colleagues. … The flagging of physical energy and discomfort caused by aging or physical ailments were quietly and realistically, at times with a gentle sense of humour, confronted without a loss of resiliency, interest and concern for others. Perhaps one cannot further differentiate this wonderful woman and her creativity and generosity for she was always more than the sum of these qualities. Her talent and enjoyment in helping others have established a lasting influence for she was a person ‘… of beauty and a joy forever’.”