Barbara Low (29 July 1874[1] – 25 December 1955) was one of the first British psychoanalysts, and an early pioneer of analytic theory in England.
Training and contributions
Low was born in London and named Alice Leonora, the eleventh and last child of Therese (née Schacherl) and Maximillian Loewe, who moved to Britain following Loewe's part in the failed 1848 uprising in Hungary. Her family was Jewish.[2] Her brothers, Sidney James Mark Low and Maurice Low, and her sister, Frances Helena Low, were journalists.[3]
In her 1920 book Psycho-Analysis. A Brief Account of the Freudian Theory,[7] she introduced the concept of the Nirvana principle[8] (German: Nirwanaprinzip)[9] for indicating the organism's tendency to keep stimuli to a minimum level. The term was taken up immediately by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.[10][8][9]