Anna Freud: life, work, and contributions to psychoanalysis

Anna Freud: Psychoanalyst and Pioneer

Anna Freud is considered a pioneer in the development of child psychoanalysis. Her work focused on how the ego functions in averting anxiety and painful ideas, impulses and feelings. Many credit her as being one of the primary ego psychoanalysts that stepped 'outside of the block' and delivered a fresh and new perspective on the psychology of personality.

Among her more memorable works included" The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence" which challenges traditional psychoanalytic thought. Her contributions are primarily in the realm of child therapy. Anna Freud is credited with developing a theory that helps explain among other things, communication patterns and personality/behavioral development in children.

Biographical Sketch

An Austrian-British psychoanalyst, Anna Freud was the youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud and his wife Martha (Wesley, 1992). She is most well-known for her work with children. Born in Vienna in 1895, Freud first worked as a children's teacher while working with her father to understand and develop psychoanalytic theory (Encarta, 1995; Wesley, 1992). It took several years before Freud discovered an active interest in psychoanalysis, and when she did she preferred to continue her work with children rather than focus on adults as her father had.

Her first "serious involvement" in the field of psychoanalysis did not begin until 1918 when her father actually psychoanalyzed her (Freud, 2004). At that point Anna began working very intimately with her father and establishing and maintaining many similar friendships within the psychoanalytic community. She attended the International Psychoanalytical Congress at the Hague in 1920 with her father, and worked intimately with him in many respects (Freud, 2004).

Anna began her own psychoanalytical practice in 1923 and began teaching a seminar at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Training Institute (Freud, 2004). She would later become the director of the Vienna Psychoanalytical training Institute in 1935 (Freud, 2004). In between this period of time Anna Freud served as General Secretary for the International Psychoanalytical Association and offered many seminars on the subject of child analysis (Freud, 2004).

Contributions to Psychology

Her work including "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence" examined ego functions and moved away from many of the traditional foundations of psychoanalytical thought thereby "establishing her reputation as a pioneering theoretician" (Freud, 2004).

Anna's work is well-known for emphasizing the function of the ego in personality development "and emphasized the use of defense mechanisms such as repression" (Encarta, 1995). Anna Freud's work focuses on finding an explanation for how individuals communicate and what mechanisms contribute to certain behavior patterns.

The majority of Anna Freud's contributions to the psychology of personality come from work completed at the Hamstead Child Therapy Clinic in London which helped establish (Boeree, 1998). Among her contributions was the discovery that communications among therapists were the "biggest obstacle to child psychology and understanding of personality," because children's problems could not be communicated in as clear and efficient a manner as adult's problems could (Boeree, 1998; Edgcumbe, 2000). Because of this Anna Freud aspired to develop a method for interpreting communication among children.

Freud took the approach that child's movement, relationships, personality and other behaviors could be considered along a developmental time line, and that a problem existed when one aspect of a child's development fell far behind or 'lagged' behind others (Boeree, 1998). Freud suggested that the problem could be communicated by describing the 'lag' in development that had been identified when the child fell behind (Boeree, 1998).

Anna Freud is considered an ego psychoanalyst. Her technique and approach to the psychology of personality involves the use of developmental lines that chart "theoretical normal growth from dependency to emotional self-reliance" (Freud, 2004). Freud also developed diagnostic profiles of patients that enable a therapist to separate the case specific factors that "deviated from or conformed to normal development" (Freud, 2004). The diagnostic profiles developed could be applied to any child with any behavioral problem in a clinical setting.