Riviere, Joan

Joan Riviere was born in Brighton, Sussex, in 1883, and was educated firstly in Brighton itself and then at Wycombe Abbey School, a well-known girls' boarding school. Although she received no university education, an event of great significance for her later career occurred in her seventeenth year when she was sent to live with a family in Gotha, Germany, in order to acquire proficiency in the German language. In 1906 she married Evelyn Riviere, a barrister at the Chancery bar and son of the successful Victorian painter, Breton Riviere. By 1915 she had entered into analysis with Ernest Jones,