Karin Stephen (1890–1953) was a British psychoanalyst and psychologist.

Karin Stephen was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College, Cambridge

Newnham College is a women-only constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick, and was the second Cambridge college to admit women after Girton College...

, where she became a Fellow. She married Adrian Stephen

Adrian Stephen

Adrian Stephen was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, an author and psychoanalyst, and the brother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell...

 shortly before World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

; the couple, as conscientious objectors, spent the war working on a dairy farm. After the war, the couple trained as doctors and then went into analysis with James Glover; when he died in 1926, Karin continued with Sylvia Payne

Sylvia Payne

Sylvia Payne was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom.-Early life:Born as Sylvia May Moore in Marylebone, London, the daughter of Rev. Edward William Moore and his wife Letitia. Her father was incumbent of Brunswick Chapel and an adherent of the Higher Life movement, being...

. Accepted as an associate member of the British Psychoanalytical Society

British Psychoanalytical Society

The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by the British psychiatrist Ernest Jones as the London Psychoanalytical Society on October 30, 1913....

 in 1927, she became a full member in 1931.

Stephen entered private practice as a psychoanalyst. She gave the first lecture course on psychoanalysis ever given at Cambridge University: the course of six lectures was repeated over several years, and formed the basis of her medical textbook Psychoanalysis and medicine. She suffered from deafness and manic depression

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...

. After her husband died in 1948, her health deteriorated and she committed suicide in 1953.

Her papers are held in the archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society

British Psychoanalytical Society

The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by the British psychiatrist Ernest Jones as the London Psychoanalytical Society on October 30, 1913....

.

Works

• The misuse of mind; a study of Bergson's attack on intellectualism, New York: Harcourt, Brace; London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1922. With a prefatory letter by Henri Bergson
  Henri Bergson
  Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
  
  . In The International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method
  The International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method
  The International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method was an influential series of monographs published published 1910–1965 under the general editorship of Charles Kay Ogden. This series published some of the landmark works on psychology and philosophy, particularly the thought...
  
  .
• Psychoanalysis & medicine; a study of the wish to fall ill, New York: Macmillan; Cambridge: The University Press, 1933.