Anna Freud
Anna Freud was an influential Austrian psychoanalyst, born in Vienna in 1895 and the youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. She followed in her father's footsteps, contributing significantly to the field, particularly in child psychology and the understanding of defense mechanisms. Throughout her career, Anna established herself as a gifted teacher and a pioneer of child psychoanalysis, advocating for the application of psychoanalytic principles to children and adolescents, which distinguished her work from her father's focus on adults.
She played a pivotal role in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute and was actively involved in supporting children affected by the aftermath of World War I. In the 1930s, as political tensions in Europe rose, Anna worked to aid those fleeing Nazi persecution. After relocating to England with her father in 1938, she continued her contributions by founding the Hampstead Child Therapy Courses and establishing a children's clinic. Anna Freud's notable publications include "The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense," which expanded on her theories of psychological development. Recognized for her achievements, she received several honors, including the Order of the British Empire, and her collected works were published posthumously. Anna Freud passed away in 1982, leaving a lasting legacy in the field of psychology.
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Subject Terms
Anna Freud
Jewish Austrian psychoanalyst and child psychologist
- Date of birth: December 3, 1895
- Place of birth: Vienna, Austria
- Date of death: October 9, 1982
- Place of death: London, England
Type of psychology: Developmental psychology; psychological methodologies
Freud was the founder of child psychoanalysis and a contributor to the development of ego psychology.
Life
Anna Freud was born in Vienna, Austria, daughter of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and the only one of his six children to follow in his footsteps. She learned psychoanalysis from her father and in turn helped him to develop many of his theories, including those on repression and other defense mechanisms. Anna Freud was a gifted teacher, a skill she later put to use to further the interests of psychoanalysis.
Despite being plagued by ill health, Anna Freud maintained a rigorous work schedule and a lively interest in many topics. Her teaching work and volunteer work with Jewish children orphaned or homeless due to World War I nurtured her interest in child psychology and development. Around this same period, from 1918 to 1922, her father psychoanalyzed her, and in 1922 she became a member of the International Psychoanalytic Congress. In 1925, she became a member of the executive board of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. In the same year, she began a career as a training analyst and assumed control of the psychoanalytic publication Verlag.
In her first book, Einführung in die Technik der Kinderanalyse (1927; Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis, 1928), she brought together her ideas on the new field of child psychoanalysis, later applying these ideas in her teaching. Her techniques with children differed from those of her father with adults, and Sigmund Freud delighted in her initiative even when she refuted his findings in the case of “Little Hans.” Her book Einführung in die Psychoanalyse für Pädagogen (1929; Psychoanalysis for Teachers and Parents, 1935) demonstrated her continued desire to move psychoanalysis to the forefront in the care of working-class people and away from its elite concerns. She became increasingly involved in Europe’s political and economic upheavals and the rise of dictator Adolf Hitler, running the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association and aiding those seeking refuge from Hitler’s Germany. She found time to write Ich und die Abwehrmechanismen (1936; The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense, 1946), moving her child psychology into the study of adolescence and arguing that the id, ego, and superego each deserve equal attention in the study of human development. Fleeing the Nazis in 1938, she accompanied her father to England. After Sigmund Freud’s death in 1939, Anna Freud’s own contribution to psychoanalysis became clearer. In 1947, for example, she and a friend, Kate Fridländer, established the Hampstead Child Therapy Courses. In 1952, they added a children’s clinic. Additionally, Anna Freud published a number of books in which she contributed to the study of child and ego psychology.
Anna Freud became a British subject; she received the Order of the British Empire in 1967, adding it to her long list of honors, including an honorary doctorate from Clark University in Massachusetts. She often visited the United States, teaching in various places, including Yale Law School, where she collaborated with Joseph Goldstein and Albert Solnit on Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973). Her collected works were published between 1968 and 1983. She died in 1982 in London, and in 1986 her home became the Freud Museum.
Bibliography
Dreher, Anna Ursula. Foundations for Conceptual Research in Psychoanalysis. Reprint. Madison: International UP, 2000. Print.
Freud, Sigmund, and Anna Freud. Correspondence, 1904–1938. Malden: Polity, 2014. Print.
Midgley, Nick. Reading Anna Freud. Hove: Routledge, 2013. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 28 Jan. 2016.
Peters, Uwe Henrik. Anna Freud: A Life Dedicated to Children. New York: Schocken, 1984. Print.
Stewart-Steinberg, Suzanne. Impious Fidelity: Anna Freud, Psychoanalysis, Politics. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2012. Print.
Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Anna Freud: A Biography. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Print.