His father died of pneumonia in Theresienstadt concentration camp, and his mother was gassed in Auschwitz.
He moved to London, took a job with a glass exporting company, and enrolled at Birkbeck College to study psychology in the evenings.
In 1955 he took a position as a clinical psychologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Yorkhill, Glasgow where he worked until 1964.
In 1964, he joined Gustav Jahoda to help establish the Department of Psychology at the University of Strathclyde.
Reflecting his own traumatic childhood, he was particularly interested in early child socialisation, attachment and mother-infant interaction.