
Mary Barkas 1922
Mary Rushton Barkas was born in 1889 in Christchurch, New Zealand, to Frederick Barkas, who worked at the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company, and Amy Barkas née Parker.
She attended Christchurch Girls’ High School and was the dux of the school in 1905.
She went on to study at Victoria University College in Wellington, graduating with a BSc in 1908, and an MSc in 1910, and later studied under Carl Jung at King’s College London.
During the First World War, she studied medicine at St Mary’s Hospital and the London School of Medicine for Women, graduating in 1918.
At the outbreak of war she was in Switzerland on a tramping trip; it took several weeks to return to London.
In 1922, Barkas travelled to Vienna to study for a graduate diploma, where she worked under Otto Rank.