Edna O'Shaughnessy (26 September 1924 – 25 January 2022) was a South African-born British Kleinian psychoanalyst.

Training

O'Shaughnessy trained in philosophy, which she taught at Oxford, before re-training as a child psychotherapist at the

Tavistock Clinic The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist mental health trust based in north London. The Trust specialises in talking therapies. The education and training department caters for 2,000 students a year from the United Ki ...

. She subsequently became an analyst and training analyst with the

British Psychoanalytical Society The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by the British neurologist Ernest Jones as the London Psychoanalytical Society on 30 October 1913. It is one of two organizations in Britain training psychoanalysts, the other being the British ...

Theoretical contributions

O'Shaughnessy explored the role of projections in the psychotic, noting how they can be "loaded with enormous hostility; they are weapons - boomerangs which destroy the foundations for intuitive knowledge of the self and object". In the tradition of

W. R. Bion Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO (; 8 September 1897 – 8 November 1979) was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965. Early life and military service Bion was born in M ...

, she emphasized the importance of thinking in forming

object relations Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between ...

, noting how failure to integrate observation and experience (due to fear of loss of

omnipotence Omnipotence is the quality of having unlimited power. Monotheistic religions generally attribute omnipotence only to the deity of their faith. In the monotheistic religious philosophy of Abrahamic religions, omnipotence is often listed as one ...

) can prevent the formation of, and working through of the Oedipal triangle.

Personal life and death

O'Shaughnessy died on 25 January 2022, at the age of 97.

References

External links

Biographical profile
hosted by the

{{DEFAULTSORT:OShaughnessy, Edna 1924 births 2022 deaths 20th-century British women scientists British psychoanalysts South African emigrants to the United Kingdom White South African people

Training

Theoretical contributions

Personal life and death

See also

References

Further reading

External links