Lives of Consequence
Dr. Lydia M. Gibson Dawes '18
Lydia M. Gibson Dawes, William Smith Class of 1918, graduated from Yale University of Medicine as one of the first four women to do so. She went on to study with Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter, and became the first child analyst and child psychiatrist at Children's Hospital in Boston, Mass.
A Buffalo, N.Y. native, Dawes majored in science and English at William Smith. She completed her M.D. at Yale Medical School in 1929. While at Yale, Dawes developed an interest in psychotherapy and subsequently moved to Vienna with her husband, Daniel Dawes.
During her four-year stay in Vienna, Dawes worked at Vienna General Hospital and the Lazar Children's Clinic. She was also analyzed by Anna Freud who continued to mentor her throughout her career. Twenty years after they first met, the success of their mentoring relationship was summed up in a letter from Freud to Dawes: "I always expected you to become a first-class analyst, but now I know that you are. I am very glad."
After leaving Vienna, Dawes completed her analysis training in 1940 at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute where she was later appointed training psychiatrist emeriti in 1972. In both Vienna and Boston, Dawes studied with: Edward Bibring, a researcher and lecturer known for his contributions to psychoanalytic theory, history and practice; August Aichhor, considered to be a founder of psychoanalytic education; and Helene Deutsch, the first psychoanalyst to specialize in women.
In Boston, Dawes was in the forefront of many of the activities of the growing psychoanalysis field, including bringing a more formal analytic focus to therapeutic work with children.
In 1960, Dawes was named clinical associate in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She later became the first child analyst and child psychiatrist at Children's Hospital in Boston, where she was appointed as a senior child psychiatrist in 1968.
In addition, Dawes served as a guest lecturer at Smith College of Social Work and M.I.T.
Dawes published one case study, the psychoanalysis of a case of "Grand Hysteria of Charcot" in a 15-year-old girl, and collaborated with Erich Lindemann and Gerald Caplan on the Wellesley Project, a community health program that was established as a result of the Coconut Grove fire in Boston in 1942, which promoted crisis intervention psychotherapy.
She passed away in Boston, Mass. in 1990.