Adrian Stephen (1883-1948) was a member of the
Bloomsbury GroupThe Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half of the...
, an author and psychoanalyst, and the brother of
Virginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
and
Vanessa BellVanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.- Biography and artwork :...
. He and his wife became interested in the work of
Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud , Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology...
, and were among the first British psychoanalysts.
With Stephen the youngest of four children, their father's death in 1904 resulted in the four siblings moving to
Bloomsbury-Places:*Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Virginia-Other:...
, and their house there became the nucleus of the Bloomsbury group.
In 1914 he married Karin Costelloe, a philosophy graduate and expert on Bergson.
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Adrian Stephen (1883-1948) was a member of the
Bloomsbury GroupThe Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half of the...
, an author and psychoanalyst, and the brother of
Virginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
and
Vanessa BellVanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.- Biography and artwork :...
. He and his wife became interested in the work of
Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud , Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology...
, and were among the first British psychoanalysts.
With Stephen the youngest of four children, their father's death in 1904 resulted in the four siblings moving to
Bloomsbury-Places:*Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Virginia-Other:...
, and their house there became the nucleus of the Bloomsbury group.
In 1914 he married Karin Costelloe, a philosophy graduate and expert on Bergson. At the outbreak of
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
both Stephen and Costelloe became
conscientious objectorA conscientious objector is an individual who, on religious, moral or ethical grounds, refuses to participate as a combatant in war or, in some cases, to take any role that would support a combatant organization armed forces. In the first case, conscientious objectors may be willing to accept...
s, like
Lytton StracheyGiles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...
and
Leonard WoolfLeonard Sidney Woolf was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, perhaps best known as the widower of author Virginia Woolf.-Life:...
, and lived out the war working on a farm in Essex.
Following the war they became interested in
psychoanalysisPsychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and continued by others. It is primarily devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior, although it also can be applied to societies.
...
, training medically at the request of
Ernest JonesAlfred Ernest Jones Welsh neurologist, psychoanalyst and Sigmund Freud’s official biographer. As the first English-language practitioner of psychoanalysis and as President of both of the British Psycho-Analytical Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association in the 1920s and 1930s,...
and later with James Glover, and becoming qualified in the late 1920s.
In 1936, Stephen decided to recount in detail the
Dreadnought HoaxThe Dreadnought Hoax was a practical joke pulled by Horace de Vere Cole in 1910. Cole tricked the Royal Navy into showing their flagship, the warship HMS Dreadnought to a supposed delegation of Abyssinian royals...
which he had taken part in a quarter of a century earlier, completing an account published by Hogarth press.
With the onset of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Stephen became so angered by the Nazis' brutality and anti-semitism that he abandoned his pacifist stance of the previous war and volunteered to become an army doctor and army officer in 1942, shortly after his sister Virginia's suicide, then joining up at the age of 60. He died in 1948.
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