Maria Dorothea Simon

Maria Dorothea Simon was born in Vienna in 1918. She trained as a kindergarten teacher and in 1936 went on to Prague to attend the Masarykschule für Sozial- und Gesundheitsfürsorge [Masaryk School for health and social services], a school of social work funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The German-speaking division of the school was closed down in 1938, and Maria Simon spent the next several years in England, where one of her positions took her to Anna Freud’s Hampstead Nursery . Starting in 1941, Simon attended the University of Oxford to pursue a degree in Social Work (receiving her Diploma in 1944). Also in 1944, she married Joseph Simon, who she had already known from her time in the socialist youth movement in Vienna. Since World War II was still raging, she decided to contribute to the efforts against National Socialism, and she joined the army and worked as a teacher for soldiers. At the same time, she took distance learning courses from London University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economic and Politics. After spending a year in Denmark, Simon went to the United States in 1946, and found employment as a social worker with the Jewish Family Welfare Service in Seattle, WA. In 1947, she returned to Vienna and went back to university for a doctorate in psychology, minoring in anthropology (Ph.D. 1952). At the same time, she received further training in psychoanalysis, working with August Aichhorn, among others. Simon’s subsequent professional activities in the United States included an assistant professorship at the University of Arkansas (1957-1961), courses at the University of Chicago (with Bruno Bettelheim, among others), and as a guest lecturer at Hofstra University.