Clara M. Thompson: An American Psychoanalyst

Published in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Volume 93, Number 1.

Clara M. Thompson’s Early Years and Professional Awakening: An American Psychoanalyst (1893-1933) and Clara M. Thompson’s Professional Evolution and Legacy: An American Psychoanalyst (1933-1958). Ann D’Ercole, A. New York. Rotledge, 2023, pp. 211 and pp. 274.

With characteristic humility, Clara Thompson once joked that her fate was to be “the first president of something.” This self-deprecating statement perfectly sums up the little I knew of Thompson before reading this biography. She served as the first president of the Washington-Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute, where I completed my training seventy years after her tenure. At no point during my studies, however, do I ever recall her name being mentioned nor her papers being assigned. In fact, were it not for a photograph of an elderly Thompson appearing on our institute’s website, I doubt I would have been able to pick her out of a lineup (even now it’s easy for me to mistake her for Melanie Klein given their physical likeness). However, after reading Ann D’Ercole’s compelling biography of this true American visionary of psychoanalytic thought, I am hopeful that Clara Thompson may finally get the recognition that often eluded her during her life.

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