Anna Freud: Facts & Contributions to Psychology
Anna Freud, the daughter of famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, made important contributions to the field of psychoanalysis in her own right.
*This page may include affiliate links; that means we earn from qualifying purchases of products. |
Perhaps you, like me, sometimes find yourself fascinated by the lives of not just famous people but their relatives as well. I once learned that somebody I lived with had been roommates with the child of two famous actors when she was in college. Not just that, but she had actually gone and stayed with them at their house in California! Naturally I had tons of questions, and I was mildly disappointed to learn that they were very nice people who just happened to be famous and wealthy. |
One person who does not fit that category is Anna Freud, the youngest of famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s six children. As this article will explain, she threw herself into her father’s field, expanding on his work and making a name for herself in her own right. Let’s look at how Anna Freud contributed to the field of psychology and what she is remembered for today.
Are You a Therapist, Coach, or Wellness Entrepreneur?
Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to
Grow Your Wellness Business Exponentially!
✓ Save hundreds of hours of time ✓ Earn more $ faster
✓ Boost your credibility ✓ Deliver high-impact content
Who Is Anna Freud? (An Introduction)
Anna Freud worked as a schoolteacher and psychoanalyst in Vienna until she was forced to flee to London in 1938 because the Nazi occupation of Austria put her family and many other Jewish families at risk. After her family settled in London, Anna Freud worked steadily for the well-being of children throughout the country. During World War II, she sought funding for and created the Hampstead War Nurseries, which were therapeutic homes for children who had lost their families during the war. Shortly after the war ended, she established the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic, where child psychoanalysts could both receive training and offer analysis, or therapy, to children.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, Anna Freud was an in-demand analyst and scholar. She wrote many articles and books about treating children from a psychoanalytic perspective and traveled often to the United States to lecture and teach (Young-Bruehl, 2008). Where her father’s work had focused primarily on the unconscious minds of individual clients, Anna Freud expanded the focus of psychoanalysis to take into consideration factors such as family dynamics and socioeconomic status. She also placed a greater priority on understanding normative as well as pathological psychological development.
Anna Freud did not have any children and is thought to perhaps have been primarily attracted to women, as evidenced by her lifetime of very close relationships and professional partnerships with women (Young-Bruehl, 2008). At the same time, she unfortunately tried to keep people who were openly nonheterosexual from practicing psychoanalysis, which has led some historians of psychology to suggest that her desire for women was very strongly repressed.
Anna Freud’s Contributions to Psychology
Anna Freud’s career in psychology formally began in 1922, when she joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Study at the ripe young age of 26. At the same time, it could be said that her psychoanalytic training started when she was much younger, because her father served as her own psychoanalyst. One family member psychoanalyzing another was something Sigmund Freud publicly advocated against, as he believed that the analytic relationship naturally brought up erotic energy between the client (also called the analysand) and the analyst. There is no evidence that Sigmund Freud acted inappropriately toward Anna Freud, and this early work clearly had a strong impact on her career goals.
Anna Freud attended a teacher’s college in Vienna and, even as she became more and more involved in the professional space of psychoanalysis, she worked as a schoolteacher and trainer of other teachers for many years (Young-Bruehl, 2008). While she and her father were both alive and working as psychoanalysts, she worked hard to protect and expand his legacy and his brand of psychoanalysis. As she became a more distinguished scholar in her own right, she emerged as a pioneer in applying his ideas to analysis with children (Young-Bruehl, 2008).
Anna Freud’s biggest overall contribution to the field of psychology was her decades-long effort to establish the field of child psychoanalysis. She was instrumental in using psychoanalytic techniques to understand both healthy and disordered development in children. She was also very involved in the establishment and funding of training programs and research centers for child psychoanalysis across Europe and the United States.
In working within the many institutions that care for children, from hospitals to nursery schools and daycares to residential schools, Anna Freud was also innovative in her research and application of psychoanalysis (Lustman, 1967). Her efforts to observe children at play and to look at their development not merely from the lens of Freud’s stages of sexual development deepened the field’s understanding of child development (Young-Bruehl, 2008).
Books by Anna Freud
This book was foundational to the field of psychoanalysis in several ways. First, it provided a general reference for understanding defense mechanisms, which are a concept that has endured in certain models of psychotherapy ever since. Second, it emphasized that all of us, and not only people with psychiatric disorders, use defense mechanisms throughout our daily lives. Third, it shifted the field of psychoanalysis into focusing on what is called ego psychology. In the field of ego psychology, psychoanalysts work less with trying to uncover deep unconscious thoughts and feelings and more with the thoughts and feelings that may be behind the use of defense mechanisms.
At the same time, Anna Freud had just recently finished another book that was seminal in her field, titled Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Lectures for Child Analysts and Teachers, 1922-1935 (Freud, 1974). In this book, she laid out principles of using psychoanalytic ideas and techniques with children that would be the foundation of her work for decades to come.
Anna Freud’s Play Therapy
Anna Freud and Education
According to many reports, Anna Freud was passionately invested in all the children who came under her care. She provided direct care to the children she watched over in her War Nurseries while also leading staff meetings and supervising other child analysts as they tried to help the children cope with losing family members and living through a war (Kennedy, 2009).
The Death of Anna Freud
Anna Freud died in London in 1982 at the age of 86. She was cremated and her ashes were buried next to her parents’ ashes in a London cemetery. The ashes of her life partner, Dorothy Burlingham, are also found there.
Anna Freud and Developmental Lines
Anna Freud was particularly interested in the many different developmental lines along which children could develop (Freud, 2018). She saw these developmental lines as featuring both normative and disordered aspects and always being subject to change in the future.
Anna Freud’s Early Years
Anna Freud grew up very close to her family and very committed to her father (Young-Bruehl, 2008). She was immersed in the upper-middle-class society of pre–World War II Vienna, where her father became increasingly well known and where the family’s status was only limited by their being Jewish and facing the Austrian anti-Semitism that would later be harnessed by the Nazis. As we noted before, from a young age she was subjected to psychoanalysis by her father, which brought them into a very close relationship. Many scholars have written about how these early years, while giving her the foundation to join her father in moving the field of psychoanalysis forward, also may have been harmful for her development (Cohler & Galatzer-Levy, 2008).
Anna Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
If you’re curious about how Anna Freud might have worked with a child or an adult in psychoanalysis, consider watching this video:
Video: Psychotherapy – Anna Freud
Fun Facts About Anna Freud
One interesting fact about Anna Freud is that in studying children through a psychoanalytic lens, she was directly responding to her father’s observation that the theory of psychoanalysis lacked direct evidence from work with children. In this regard, she very clearly took up his suggestion that the field would be stronger if its teachings were found to be effective with children as well as with adults.
Anna Freud Quotes
- “Emotional intelligence is just as important as intellectual intelligence in the development of a child.”
- “Who promised you that only for joy were you brought to this earth?”
- “If some longing goes unmet, don’t be astonished. We call that Life.”
- “It is only when parental feelings are ineffective or too ambivalent or when the mother’s emotions are temporarily engaged elsewhere that children feel lost.”
- “Create around one at least a small circle where matters are arranged as one wants them to be.”
- “Everything becomes so problematic because of basic faults: from a discontent with myself.”
Articles Related to Anna Freud
Books Related to Anna Freud
Final Thoughts on Anna Freud
Anna Freud made very important contributions to the field of psychoanalysis, distinguishing herself as far more than the daughter of the founder of the field. She was also a pioneering woman in the field of psychology more broadly, one whose generous spirit and desire to understand child development touched many therapists, educators, and researchers in Europe and the United States.
Don’t Forget to Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to
Grow Your Wellness Business Exponentially!
References
- Cohler, B. J., & Galatzer-Levy, R. M. (2008). Freud, Anna, and the problem of female sexuality. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 28(1), 3–26.
- Donaldson, G. (1996). Between practice and theory: Melanie Klein, Anna Freud and the development of child analysis. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 32(2), 160–176.
- Freud, A. (1936). The ego and the mechanisms of defense. International Universities Press.
- Freud, A. (1974). The writings of Anna Freud: I. Introduction to psychoanalysis: Lectures for child analysts and teachers, 1922-1935. International Universities Press.
- Freud, A. (2018). Normality and pathology in childhood: Assessments of development. Routledge.
- Kennedy, H. (2009). Children in conflict: Anna Freud and the war nurseries. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 64(1), 306–319.
- Lustman, S. L. (1967). The scientific leadership of Anna Freud. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 15(4), 810–827.
- Midgley, N. (2008). The ‘Matchbox School’ (1927–1932): Anna Freud and the idea of a ‘psychoanalytically informed education’. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 34(1), 23–42.
- Viner, R. (1996). Melanie Klein and Anna Freud: The discourse of the early dispute. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 32(1), 4–15.
- Young-Bruehl, E. (2008). Anna Freud: a biography. Yale University Press.
Are You a Therapist, Coach, or Wellness Entrepreneur?
Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to Grow Your Wellness Business Fast!
