Catalogue description Dorothy Burlingham Papers

Burlingham, Dorothy

Dorothy Trimble Tiffany was born in New York, the granddaughter of Charles Tiffany, founder of Tiffany & Co. She married Robert Burlingham in 1914, separating from him in 1921. Dorothy moved to Vienna in 1925 and was prompted by her son’s psychosomatic skin disorder to begin her four children in psychoanalysis. She later began psychoanalysis herself, and decided to become a lay analyst. For this she underwent analysis with Sigmund Freud. Here she met Anna Freud, the two living and working as partners throughout their lives, collaborating on published works, living together in Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead and running the Hampstead Clinic. Burlingham worked with Anna Freud to establish first the Hampstead War Nurseries and later the Hampstead Clinic. She wrote on child analysis and development, particularly on blind children and infants, whom she worked with at the Hampstead Clinic.

Publications include: Infants Without Families, 1943 (written with Anna Freud); War and Children, 1943 (written with Anna Freud); Twins: A study of three pairs of identical twins, 1952; To Be Blind in a Sighted World, 1979.