Author, educator, and psychoanalyst Selma Fraiberg was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1918. She was educated at Wayne State University, receiving a B.A. in 1940 and a M.S.W. in 1945. A professor of child psychoanalysis at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of California, San Francisco, she specialized in child development, focusing in particular on the development of children born blind and on the bonding that occurs between mother and child. Her work has sometimes been compared to that of Anna Freud, who conducted research on similar topics. Fraiberg is best known for her book The Magic Years, a study of cognitive and emotional development in early childhood, for… which she received the 1959 book of the year award from the Child Study Association of America. She also wrote Every Child's Birthright: In Defense of Mothering, Clinical Studies in Infant Mental Health: The First Year of Life, and in collaboration with her husband, Louis Fraiberg, Insights from the Blind: Developmental Studies of Blind Children. Fraiberg died of cancer in 1981.