Alix Strachey (1892–1973)

Alix Strachey, née Sargant-Florence, was born in Nutley, New Jersey, to an artistic family. Her parents were Mary Sargant Florence, a British painter, and Henry Smyth Florence, an American musician. Her father died in a drowning accident when she was a baby, and her mother moved the family to England. Alix was educated at Bedales School, the Slade School of Fine Art, and Cambridge University, where she read modern languages. After graduating in 1914, she went to live with her brother Philip Sargant-Florence in his flat in Bloomsbury, London, where she met and became a member of the Bloomsbury Group. In this way she met James Strachey, assistant editor of The Spectator. They moved in together in 1919 and married the following year, then went to Vienna, where James began psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud. Soon afterwards, Alix also underwent psychoanalysis with Freud, then later with Karl Abraham in Berlin. in 1924. Freud asked the Stracheys to translate some of his works into English, and this was to become their lives' work. Their translations remain the standard editions of Freud's works to this day. Both Alix and James Strachey became psychoanalysts themselves, and in addition to Freud's works, also translated works by other notable European psychoanalysts, including Karl Abraham, Melanie Klein, and Otto Fenichel. Alix was instrumental in arranging Klein's first visit to London in 1925. She also published her own independent works, including The Psychology of Nationhood (i1960), The Unconscious Motives of War (1957), and A New German-English Psychoanalytical Vocabulary (1943). Her correspondence with her husband during her stay in Berlin was published in 1985 as Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey, 1924-1925.