English psychoanalyst and physician James Glover was born in Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland. Six years older than his well-known brother Edward, James was, after Ernest Jones, the most notable British (Scottish) psychoanalyst of his era. As he died prematurely from diabetes at the age of fourty-four, after only eight years of training and practice of psychoanalysis, he left few publications. Had not Ernest Jones devoted eight pages of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (volume 8, 1926) to his obituary, there would be little record of his life and the name of Glover would exclusively be associated with his younger brother.

James and Edward were the sons of Matthew Glover, country schoolmaster and academic, and Elizabeth Smith Shanks, who came of a farming family. There was a middle brother who died. James was regarded as the genius of the family and Edward as the more pedestrian. James received a fine Scottish...