Thompson, Clara

Thompson, Clara (Mabel)

(1893–1958) psychoanalyst; born in Providence, R.I. She attended Pembroke, the women's college affiliated with Brown University (1912–16), and received her M.D. from Johns Hopkins University (1920). She was influenced by William Alanson White, Harry Stack Sullivan, Sandor Ferenczi, Karen Horney, and other neo-Freudians, and taught at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute (1933–41). In a famous schism in the American psychoanalytic community, in 1943 she helped establish the William Alanson White Institute (director, 1946–58), a training school. She continued her private practice and made her major contributions to psychoanalysis through her influence on students and colleagues. She did, however, publish some original work on women and sexuality, her best-known book being Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development (with Patrick Mullahy, 1950).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.