Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham and the psychology of the congenitally blind child

Abstract

Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham (1891–1979) was a leading child psychoanalyst with a particular interest in congenitally blind children. She was a daughter of the artist Louis Comfort Tiffany and a granddaughter of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of the retail empire. Suffering from an unhappy marriage to a psychiatrically ill husband, she emigrated to Europe with her four children seeking psychoanalysis. She ultimately became a lay psychoanalyst and a lifelong partner—both professional and personal—of Anna Freud (1895–1982). Burlingham, at age 67, founded a day nursery for blind children in London. Based on these experiences, she wrote extensively on the psychological problems facing these children. These included, among others, an impaired ego development, the need to remain still (both for safety concerns and to better employ their hearing), and their anomalous relations with their parents and their sighted peers. Her unusual life journey led to many important contributions to this field.