Ian Suttie (1889 –1935)[1] was born in Glasgow[2] and was the third child[3] of David and Catherine Suttie (nee Campbell). Ian Suttie graduated MB, ChB from the University of Glasgow in 1914[4], which placed him in the Scottish tradition of the philosopher John Mac Murray[5]. He proceeded to MD in 1931[6] and after graduating he worked at the Govan District Asylum: Hawkshead (which was later known as Leverndale)[7].
Ian Suttie joined the army in August of 1914, serving as a Lieutenant with the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War 1 and was awarded the 1914 Star[8] or Mons Star for his service in France[9]. He also saw service in Mesopotamia (now Iraq), where he became interested in the role of social and cultural factors in mental health and was particularly influenced by the anthropological thinking of the time[10]. He was also highly influenced by the work of Sandor Ferenczi particularly around the maternal role[11] and Ian Suttie and his wife Jane would later develop an important friendship with Sandor Ferenczi[12], whose work Jane Suttie translated[13].
After the war Ian Suttie went on to develop his own independent thought on the function and technique of psychotherapy while working in Scottish mental hospitals: the Glasgow Royal Asylum, the Gartnavel and Kenlaw Private Asylum. He then moved to London to establish a private consulting practice[14] and joined the Tavistock Clinic in 1928[15]. He worked at the Tavistock Clinic first as a psychiatrist and later when it moved to Malet Street became its physician, working both as a clinician and a lecturer[16]. Ian Suttie married Jane Isabel Robertson and they worked together at the Tavistock[17].
From the beginning of the 1920s Suttie engaged in a critique of psychoanalytic doctrine, particularly Freud’s assumption of an opposition between biological instincts and civilization[18]. Suttie instead proposed that emotional development was made possible through the individual’s place in a network of wider relationships[19]. Suttie believed that the intersection between the individual, the state, and society was crucial to emotional health[20], which is why Suttie is sometimes credited with psychosocial theory[21].
Drawing on his anthropological interests[22], Suttie’s thesis rejected instincts and infantile sexuality, deriving all development from the loving attachment of baby to mother[23] and suggesting that the ‘original object of love’ was ‘the mother and not the father’[24]. Suttie believed that the infant mind was dominated from the beginning by the need to retain the mother, and that this innate need was the motivation which powered all future growth’[25]. As JA Hadfield said about Suttie’s theory, ‘love is protective… and the sense of security is more important to the child than feelings of pleasure’ and that ‘most disorders in early childhood… originate in a lack of security and love rather than in incestuous desires’[26].
Suttie argued against Freud’s notion that aggression was a primal element of the mind, suggesting instead that aggression was the product of impaired relationships and thwarted love[27]. The infant’s love for the mother was the primal emotion, whereas hate was ‘not an independent instinct but… a development or intensification of separation-anxiety’[28]. For Suttie all later social relationships were either a result of, or compensation for, the early secure period of the mother/child bond[29].
This theoretical stance also had implications for the role of the therapist, which for Suttie was not to analyse, but to provide an environment of care, concern and a committed relationship that acted as a corrective to any maternal failings[30].
Suttie’s notion of the psychological bonding with mother is an interesting forerunner of John Bowlby and attachment theory[31]. Bowlby himself acknowledged Suttie’s importance by writing an appreciative foreword to Suttie’s book The Origins of Love and Hate when it was reissued in 1988, saying that it was ‘a robust and lucid statement of a paradigm that now leads the way’[32]. Suttie’s work also foreshadowed the work of Winnicott’s Why Children Play, with Suttie arguing in 1935 that ‘play is a necessity not merely to develop bodily and mental faculties, but to give the individual that reassuring contact with his fellows which he has lost when the mother’s nurtural services are no longer required or offered’[33].
As a writer he contributed frequently to the British Medical Journal, the Journal of Neurology and Psychopathology, the Journal of Mental Science and the Journal of Medical Psychology[34].
Ian Suttie died unexpectedly on 23 October 1935[35] just before his book The Origins of Love and Hate was published.
Author: Glenn Gossling 2020
Bibliography
The Origins of Love and Hate, Kegan Paul, 1935
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.218220/page/n1
[1] Rhodri Hayward, ‘Enduring Emotions’, p829 , Isis, Vol. 100, No. 4, The University of Chicago Press, December 2009
[2] ‘Obituary’, p880, British Medical Journal, 2 November 1935
[3] C Kirkwood, The Persons in Relation Perspective, p20, Sense Publishers, 2012
[4] ‘Obituary’, p880, British Medical Journal, 2 November 1935
[5] Torres and Hinshelwood, Bion’s Sources, p48, Routledge, 2013
[6] ‘Obituary’, p880, British Medical Journal, 2 November 1935
[7] C Kirkwood, The Persons in Relation Perspective, p20, Sense Publishers, 2012
[8] British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Cards
[9] C Kirkwood, The Persons in Relation Perspective, p20, Sense Publishers, 2012
[10] D Mann, Love and Hate: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, p111, Routledge, 2002
[11] D Mann, Love and Hate: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, p111, Routledge, 2002
[12] Torres and Hinshelwood, Bion’s Sources, p47, Routledge, 2013
[13] C Kirkwood, The Persons in Relation Perspective, p20, Sense Publishers, 2012
[14] ‘Obituary’, p880, British Medical Journal, 2 November 1935
[15] HV Dicks, 50 Years of the Tavistock Clinic, p334, Routledge, 1970
[16] ‘Obituary’, p880, British Medical Journal, 2 November 1935
[17] Torres and Hinshelwood, Bion’s Sources, p47, Routledge, 2013
[18] Rhodri Hayward, ‘Enduring Emotions’, p829 , Isis, Vol. 100, No. 4, The University of Chicago Press, December 2009
[19] Rhodri Hayward, ‘Enduring Emotions’, p829 , Isis, Vol. 100, No. 4, The University of Chicago Press, December 2009
[20] Rhodri Hayward, ‘Enduring Emotions’, p829 , Isis, Vol. 100, No. 4, The University of Chicago Press, December 2009
[21] Torres and Hinshelwood, Bion’s Sources, p47, Routledge, 2013
[22] D Mann, Love and Hate: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, p112, Routledge, 2002
[23] Torres and Hinshelwood, Bion’s Sources, p47, Routledge, 2013
[24] Ian Suttie, The Origins of Love and Hate, p4, Kegan Paul, 1935
[25] Ian Suttie, The Origins of Love and Hate, p15, Kegan Paul, 1935
[26] Ian Suttie, The Origins of Love and Hate, pxv, Kegan Paul, 1935
[27] D Mann, Love and Hate: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, p112, Routledge, 2002
[28] Ian Suttie, The Origins of Love and Hate, p31, Kegan Paul, 1935
[29] D Mann, Love and Hate: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, p112, Routledge, 2002
[30] D Mann, Love and Hate: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, p112, Routledge, 2002
[31] Torres and Hinshelwood, Bion’s Sources, p48, Routledge, 2013
[32] John Bowlby, Origins of Love and Hate,p xvii, Free Association Books, 1988
[33] Ian Suttie, The Origins of Love and Hate, p18, Kegan Paul, 1935
[34] ‘Obituary’, p880, British Medical Journal, 2 November 1935
[35] ‘Obituary’, p880, British Medical Journal, 2 November 1935