Karin Stephen (née Costelloe; 10 March 1889 – 12 December 1953) was a British psychoanalyst and psychologist.
Early life and education
![Pearsall Smith Family](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Pearsall_Smith_Family.jpg)
Karin Stephen was born Catherine Elizabeth Costelloe. Her mother,
Mary Costelloe (born Mary Whitall Smith) (better known as Mary Berenson; 1864–1945) had been a Philadelphia Quaker, and her father, Benjamin Francis Conn Costelloe (1855–1899) a Northern Irish convert to Roman Catholicism. The relationship between her parents was difficult, and her mother left her husband when Karin and her sister
Rachel
Rachel () was a Biblical figure, the favorite of Jacob's two wives, and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve progenitors of the tribes of Israel. Rachel's father was Laban. Her older sister was Leah, Jacob's first wife. Her aun ...
were very young. Her father died in 1899 when she was ten years old, so the sisters were then looked after by their grandmother. While at boarding school she won a scholarship for
Newnham College, Cambridge
Newnham College is a women's constituent college of the University of Cambridge.
The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sidgwick and suffragist campaigner Millicen ...
.
Stephen went up to Newnham in 1907 but left after one year, due to various personal and health problems. She then spent a year at
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United ...
where she began to study philosophy and psychology. In 1909 she returned to Newnham and received a First class degree in Moral Sciences in 1910. In 1914 she became a Fellow at Newnham.
Career
In 1913 she and three other women started an unsuccessful legal action, known as ''Bebb vs. the Law Society'', claiming that the
Law Society should be compelled to admit them to its preliminary examinations.
The three other women were
Gwyneth Bebb, who the action was named after,
Maud Crofts, and
Lucy Nettlefold.
She married
Adrian Stephen
Adrian Leslie Stephen (27 October 1883 – 3 May 1948) was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, an author and psychoanalyst, and the younger brother of Thoby Stephen, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. He and his wife Karin Stephen became interest ...
(brother of
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
and
Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen).
Early life and education
Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...
) in 1914. They had two children, Ann (1916–97) and Judith (1918–72). The couple, as
conscientious objectors
A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to objecti ...
, spent the war working on a dairy farm. They became interested in the work of
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...
and after the war, the couple trained as doctors in order to practice psychoanalysis. They went into analysis with James Glover and when he died, in 1926, Karin continued with
Sylvia Payne. They both qualified in 1927 and she worked in a psychiatric hospital. Accepted as an associate member of 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 ...
in 1927, she became a full member in 1931.
[Allie Dillon]
Provenance: XP14A - Stephen, Karin (1890-1953) née Costelloe, psychologist and psychoanalyst
Stephen entered private practice as a psychoanalyst. She gave the first lecture course on psychoanalysis ever given at
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
: the course of six lectures was repeated over several years, and formed the basis of her medical textbook ''Psychoanalysis and medicine''.
[Marion Milner, 'Obituary: Karin Stephen (1889-1953)', ''The International journal of psycho-analysis'', Vol. 35, 1954, pp.432-3] She suffered from deafness and
manic depression
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
. After her husband died in 1948, her health deteriorated and she committed suicide in 1953.
[
]Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own wo ...
considered Stephen 'Old Bloomsbury'.[Hermione Lee, ''Virginia Woolf'' London: Chatto & Windus (1996), p. 263]
Her papers are held in the archives of 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 ...
.[Allie Dillon]
Karin Stephen collection (P14)
Works
* ''The misuse of mind; a study of Bergson's attack on intellectualism'', New York: Harcourt, Brace; London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1922. With a prefatory letter by Henri Bergson. In .
* ''Psychoanalysis & medicine; a study of the wish to fall ill'', New York: Macmillan; Cambridge: The University Press, 1933.
* 'Introjection and Projection: Guilt and Rage', ''British Journal of Medical Psychology'' 14, pp. 316–31, 1934.
* 'A correspondence with Dr Karin Stephen', in C. H. Waddington
Conrad Hal Waddington (8 November 1905 – 26 September 1975) was a British developmental biologist, paleontologist, geneticist, embryologist and philosopher who laid the foundations for systems biology, epigenetics, and evolutionary devel ...
, ''Science As Ethics'', London: George Allen & Unwin, 1943.
* 'Relations between the Superego and the Ego', ''Psychoanalysis and History'' 2:1 (February 2000)
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stephen, Karin
1890 births
1953 deaths
British psychologists
British psychoanalysts
Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge
People with bipolar disorder
Stephen-Bell family
Bloomsbury Group
20th-century psychologists
1953 suicides
Suicides in the United Kingdom