Elizabeth Spillius
{{Short description|Canadian anthropologist & psychoanalyst}}
Elizabeth Spillius (née Bott (March 3, 1924 – July 4, 2016){{viaf|39463868}}{{cite web|url=http://matangitonga.to/2016/07/13/chance-visit-led-important-study-tongan-society-elizabeth-bott-spillius-nua-1924-2016|title=Chance visit led to important study of Tongan Society by Elizabeth Bott Spillius (Nua) 1924-2016 |author=Fonua, Mary Lyn |work= Matangi Tonga |date=13 July 2016 |publisher=Vava'u Press|accessdate=24 January 2018}} was a Canadian-English anthropologist, sociologist, and Kleinian psychoanalyst.
Life
Born to Canadian psychologists Helen Bott and Edward Alexander Bott,{{cite journal|url=http://moreno.ss.uci.edu/71.pdf|title=A Note on the Ancestral Toronto Home of Social Network Analysis|last=Freeman|first=Linton C.|authorlink=Linton Freeman|author2=Barry Wellman|year=1995|volume=18|issue=2|journal=Connections|pages=15|accessdate=10 September 2014|archive-date=4 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304044214/http://moreno.ss.uci.edu/71.pdf|url-status=dead}} Elizabeth Bott studied psychology at the University of Toronto and anthropology at the University of Chicago, where she gained her MA in 1949. She then travelled to London to work in anthropology at the London School of Economics and the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.{{cite web | url=http://www.psychoanalytikerinnen.de/greatbritain_biographies.html#Spillius | title=Women psychoanalysts in Great Britain: Elizabeth Bott Spillius | publisher=Psychoanalytikerinnen | work=Biografisches Lexikon | accessdate=January 25, 2018|first=Brigitte|last=Nölleke|date=December 18, 2017}}
Often regarded as a member of the Manchester Group of anthropologists,[http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/archive/list/item/?id=5631&year=2010&month=04 “Manchester Group” of researchers honoured], 14 April 2010. her best-known work was Family and Social Network (1957), based on her 1956 PhD with working-class families in East London, in which she formulated what was subsequently labelled the Bott Hypothesis: that the density of a husband and wife's separate social networks was positively associated with marital role segregation. The first results of her seminal work have been presented in front of a UNESCO seminar under the title Urban Families: Conjugal roles and social networks (1954) and subsequently have been published in 1955 and 1957.{{Cite journal|last=Bott|first=Elizabeth|date=2016-04-22|title=Urban Families: Conjugal Roles and Social Networks|journal=Human Relations|language=en|volume=8|issue=4|pages=345–384|doi=10.1177/001872675500800401|s2cid=145706446 }} Therein she has also conceptualized different aspects of labour and task-division between couples and examined the supporting function of the environment relevant to current co-parenting research.
File:Spillius, Elizabeth 2016.jpg]]
In 1956, she began training analysis as a Kleinian psychoanalyst with Lois Munro. From 1958 to 1960, she carried out anthropological fieldwork in Tonga with her husband James. She became a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1964, and a training and supervisory analyst in 1975.
From 1988 to 1998, she was general editor of the Routledge series New Library of Psychoanalysis. She has written several works of introduction to the work of Melanie Klein.
She died on 4 July 2016 and was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.
Works
- Elizabeth Bott. 1957. Family and Social Network. London: Tavistock.
- (ed.) Melanie Klein today: developments in theory and practice, Tavistock/Routledge, 1987. New Library of Psychoanalysis 7–8.
- (ed. with Michael Feldman) Psychic equilibrium and psychic change : selected papers of Betty Joseph, Tavistock/Routledge, 1989. New Library of Psychoanalysis 9
- (ed. with a preface) Melanie Klein in Berlin: her first psychoanalyses of children by Claudia Frank. Routledge, 2009.
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.therai.org.uk/archives-and-manuscripts/manuscript-contents/0307-bott-elizabeth-afterwards-mrs-james-spillius-qcollectionq-ms-307/
Bott, Elizabeth, [afterwards] Mrs James Spillius "collection" (MS 307) ] - {{cite journal|last1=Milton|first1=J|title=Obituary for Elizabeth Jane Bott Spillius.|journal=The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis|volume=98|issue=3|pages=927–934|date=23 March 2017|doi=10.1111/1745-8315.12654|pmid=28332709|s2cid=206930840}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2019}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2015}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Spillius, Elizabeth}}
Category:Burials at Highgate Cemetery
Category:Canadian sociologists
Category:Canadian psychoanalysts
Category:Canadian anthropologists
Category:University of Toronto alumni
Category:University of Chicago alumni
Category:Canadian women sociologists