Anna Freud - Freud's Daughter

Anna Freud

Anna Freud was the youngest of six children born to Sigmund Freud and Martha Freud in Vienna. She started elementary school in 1901 when she was six years old. Her father, Sigmund Freud, became a professor, which allowed the family to live a comfortable life. However, Anna didn’t have a very good relationship with her mother. From a young age, she often competed for her parents' attention, especially being compared to her sister Sophie Freud. Anna found school dull and didn't enjoy it much, preferring to learn from her father at home. She recalled learning more from him than at school. Her father taught her various languages, including Hebrew, German, English, French, and Italian.

 

In 1908, Anna underwent an appendix surgery. She wasn’t told about the surgery beforehand, which caused her a lot of stress and required several months of recovery. In 1912, she graduated from high school at the age of 17. She passed an exam in 1914 to become a trainee teacher at her alma mater and worked as a temporary teacher from 1915 to 1917, then as a full-time teacher from 1917 to 1920. During this time, she began translating her father’s works into German, which sparked her interest in child psychology and psychoanalysis. Anna was unique in that she transitioned from teaching to psychoanalysis, paving the way for non-medical professionals to enter the field.

 

Although she was greatly influenced by her father’s writings, Anna developed her own ideas. She expanded on her father’s theories and pioneered the field of child psychoanalysis. While she did not pursue further formal education, she made significant contributions to psychoanalysis and child psychology. In 1923, she began practicing child psychoanalysis in Vienna and served as the president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society from 1925 to 1928. During her time in Vienna, she also influenced Erik Erikson. In 1936, she published "The Ego and Defense Mechanisms," explaining that repression is a major defense mechanism in humans. In 1938, Anna was arrested by the Gestapo but later moved to London with her father.

 

In 1941, Anna, along with Dorothy Burlington, founded the Hampstead Nursery. The nursery provided shelter for homeless children and incorporated psychoanalytic programs. Based on her experiences there, she published several works including "Young Children in Wartime" (1942), "Infants Without Families" (1943), and "War and Children" (1943). After the Hampstead Nursery closed in 1945, Anna established the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic and served as its director from 1952 until her death in 1982. From the 1950s, she also regularly traveled to the United States to give lectures. Besides her work in child psychoanalysis, Anna made significant contributions to understanding how the ego or consciousness helps people avoid distressing thoughts, impulses, and emotions.

 

Anna’s 1968 book, "Normality and Pathology in Childhood," is a collection of her theories. She developed her own techniques for analyzing children, independent of guidance from others. Her twenty-year-long debate with the Kleinian School, which was also beginning to explore child analysis at the time, is well-known. Anna highlighted the importance of motivation for therapy, parental cooperation, and the therapist’s neutral attitude in child psychoanalysis, showing differences from the Kleinian approach. Along with H. Hartmann and others, she created "The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child," an annual publication that compiled the research of the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic and her theories. Anna Freud had a profound impact on child psychiatry, and her theories continue to play a central role in the field today.