Content area
Full Text
DR ILSE Hellman Noach, the distinguished psychoanalyst and expert on child development, has died, aged 90. Her early fascination with children in her home city of Vienna led to a two-year course in the treatment of juvenile delinquency, evening classes in psychology at the Sorbonne and the offer of work in a home near Paris for offenders too young to go to prison. The home, unique in Europe, was run on family lines, with one staff member looking after each small group of children.
On returning to Vienna, Hellman studied under Professor Charlotte Buhler, head of the university's department of child development, who was making detailed studies of children from birth onwards. In 1937 Buhler invited Hellman to join her in London to study retarded children and sufferers from Down's syndrome.
At the outbreak of the second world war the Home Office employed Hellman to work with child evacuees from London. Taken...