Claire Golomb, who fled to Holland with her family to escape the Nazis and who later became a renowned child psychologist, died July 26 in Boston. She was 95.

Her work focused on children’s art, make-believe play, story construction, and the role of gender in those pursuits. “Being master of an imaginary universe empowers the child, gives expression to often vaguely understood feelings, provides compensation for feeling helpless or powerless, and joy for having invented a world on its own,” she said in an interview in connection with the publication of her book, “The Creation of Imaginary Worlds.”

Of her chosen field, she said, “The events of the Holocaust and its effect on my family and my community no doubt influenced my decision to choose a career of service, a desire to improve upon the world in some ways,” she said. She was a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts for more than 40 years.