James Anthony

Elwyn James Anthony (21 January 1916 – 10 December 2014) was a British psychoanalyst and was best known for his work on resilience and invulnerability risk in children, particularly those whose parents had serious mental illnesses. He was one of two founders, along with S. H. Foulkes, of the field of group psychotherapy. A prolific writer, he authored 320 research articles and 18 books, many of which were translated into multiple languages. James Anthony was a training psychoanalyst who studied in London where he began a distinguished career as a child psychotherapist and psychiatrist. He studied child development under Jean Piaget and, after leaving the Maudsley Hospital, occupied the Ittleson Chair of Child Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis. He later became Director of Psychotherapy at Chestnut Lodge, where he developed a program of group psychotherapy for adolescent inpatients. He was President of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), President of the International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions, the Association for Child Analysis, and the World Association of Infant Psychiatry. Anthony was recruited from England in 1958 to hold the world’s first endowed chair in Child Psychiatry, the Blanche F. Ittleson Professorship at Washington University in St. Louis where most of his longitudinal research was conducted. His work in St. Louis at the Edison Child Study Center included many grants from foundations and the NIMH. His collaboration with Foulkes, who became his training analyst, began at Northfield Hospital and in the 1950s he became a founder member of the Group Analytic Society. Anthony was born in Calcutta,India and educated in Darjeeling, India.