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Ian Dishart Suttie (1889-1935) was a Scottish psychiatrist perhaps best known for his writings on the taboo in families on expressing tenderness.[1]
His influential book The Origins of Love and Hate was posthumously published in 1935.
The third son of a Glasgow medical doctor, Suttie took his medical degree there before joining the staff of the Glasgow Royal Asylum, where he married his wife (and future co-author) Dr. Jane Robertson. He continued to work in Scotland until 1928, when he moved south to join the Tavistock Clinic.[2]
Suttie had served with the RAMC in Mesopotamia in 1918, where he became interested in the anthropology of the mother child bond – an interest confirmed by the influence of Sandor Ferenczi.[3] His writings reveal an ongoing debate with Freud – whose concept of the death drive he rejected as unscientific[4] – over the importance of companionship as against sex in the mother-child relationship: a theme (tinged with Christian thinking) which was to influence the thinking of W. R. D. Fairbairn, and anticipate the work of D. W. Winnicott and John Bowlby.[5] He developed the theme in a series of papers (with his wife) published between 1922 and 1931, which he would subsequently draw upon for his (posthumous) book of 1935.[6]
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Continental critics see Suttie's work as reflecting a very British complacency about sexuality, and a downplaying of its problematics.[7]
- Suttie, I. D. (1988). The Origins of Love and Hate. London: Free Association Books.
Bibliography in pages xli-xlii.
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