Ian Dishart Suttie (1889-1935) was a Scottish psychiatrist perhaps best known for his writings on the taboo in families on expressing tenderness.
He continued to work in Scotland until 1928, when he moved south to join the Tavistock Clinic.
[3] His writings reveal an ongoing debate with Freud – whose concept of the death drive he rejected as unscientific[4] – over the importance of companionship as against sex in the mother-child relationship: a theme (tinged with Christian thinking) which was to influence the thinking of W. R. D. Fairbairn, and anticipate the work of D. W. Winnicott and John Bowlby.
[5] He developed the theme in a series of papers (with his wife) published between 1922 and 1931, which he would subsequently draw upon for his (posthumous) book of 1935.
[6] Continental critics see Suttie's work as reflecting a very British complacency about sexuality, and a downplaying of its problematics.