Esther Bick

Esther Bick, (1902–1983), born in Przemyśl, Galicia, Poland (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), was a psychologist and child and adult psychoanalyst who, with Dr. John Bowlby, established the child and adolescent psychotherapy training program at the Tavistock Clinic, London, in 1948.

Estera Lifsa Wander was born the oldest daughter in an orthodox Jewish family in Poland.

After graduation, she married a medical student Philipp Bick (1904-?); the couple had fled Austria to Switzerland together after the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938.

Because she could not get a work permit there, she went to England, without her husband, as a refugee.

Most of her family that remained in Poland died later in Nazi concentration camps.

She settled in Manchester, working in nurseries during the war.

She studied in Vienna with Charlotte Bühler and completed her doctorate in 1935.

In 1948 she was invited by John Bowlby to head a child psychotherapy training at the Tavistock Clinic, which had just joined the new British National Health Service.

Bick would continue to head the organization until 1960.

She is known for developing the method of psychoanalytic infant observation.

Her discovery of the potential of infant observation undertaken within the child's home over the first year or two of life became the foundation of the growth of a psychoanalytic perspective within the observer.

It was a conceptual innovation in the history of child and later adult psychoanalytic training and was pioneered in Italy by child neuropsychiatrist Marcella Balconi.

It has since become an essential feature of pre-clinical training in child and adult psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and related fields throughout the world.