the family poultry business, while Dorella was a stay at home mother. In 1945, she married Professor and author Dr. Louis Fraiberg, who she met while studying at Wayne State University. The Fraibergs had a daughter, Lisa in 1956. In 1979 the Fraibergs moved to San Francisco. In August 1981, Fraiberg was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She died four months later on December 19, 1981, at the age of 63. Academic career Selma Fraiberg graduated from Wayne State University with a master's degree in social work in 1940. She then went to the Detroit Psychoanalytic Institute to completer her psychoanalytic training. From 1963 to 1979 she was the professor of psychoanalysis at the University of Michigan. During this time she was also the director of the Child Development Project. After moving to San Francisco Selma became the director of an infant-parent program at the San Francisco General Hospital. Author of several influential psychoanalytic texts such as: The Magic Years and Clinical Studies in Infant Mental Health Contributions Infant blindness studies Selma Fraiberg's research revolved around discovering the effects of visual deprivation in infants. Particularly, she wanted to look at the effects blindness had on ego development and organization of experience in infants. One infant that was studied by Fraiberg contributed to two new findings. The infant, Toni, was considered normal blind, as defined by Fraiberg. Prior to these findings it had been believed that an infant smiling response would only result from visual stimulus of a human. However, this was overturned when Toni would smile after hearing her mother's voice. A second new finding was related to stranger anxiety. Stranger anxiety had been thought to only be an effect of a visual distinction between a known face and an unknown face. This was also questioned when Toni would not smile in response to hearing a voice of anyone except her mother around the age of eight months old. Fraiberg also distinguished the importance of a blind infant's mouth as a replacement to their deficiency in visual stimulus. She noted that blind infants use their mouth as a way to perceive the world much longer than non-blind infants. Tactile perception is important to developing the difference between the inner and outer self. Since blind infants lack visual perceptions, they rely on their mouth for perceiving the world well into their second year of life. This results in failure of