Hermine Hug-Hellmuth: Her Life and Work

Hermine Hug-Hellmuth was the world's first practising child psychoanalyst, making use of systematic child observation from a psychoanalytic point of view and applying psychoanalysis to education. A number of factors - her close ties with education, the unfortunate circumstances of her murder by a nephew, and her own intensely private personality - have contributed to her relative obscurity. Working from primary archival material, the authors have compiled a detailed coverage of Hug-Hellmuth's life and work. In the first part of the book they present a brief biography, pieced together from the few extant descriptions of Hug-Hellmuth as a person. In the second part they provide a selection of published but previously untranslated material in historical sequence. An epilogue summarizes Hug-Hellmuth's contributions to psychoanalytic theory and practice, drawing comparisons with the early work of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein.