Anna Freud and her contributions to psychoanalysis

Anna Freud devoted herself to the analysis of children and adolescents and her famous psychoanalyst father, Sigmund Freud was a major influence in her life and career. Even though her father was a great influence in her works, she also differed from her father's analysis of adults and had her own thinking as well.

Austrian-British psychoanalyst Anna Freud who lived from 1895-1982 was renowned particularly for her work in the psychoanalysis of children. (Anna Freud: Distinguished Women of Past and Present) Anna Freud was born on 3rd December 1895 in Vienna; she was the 6th and last child to Sigmund and Maratha Freud. She was famous for her naughtiness and was an active child. (Anna Freud: (www.d2blog.typepad.com) Anna Freud, the originator of child psychoanalysis, started her career under her father's support. She was raised in the family of Sigmund Freud, the originator of psychology, and worked directly with her father in the progress of psychoanalytic theory. She devoted most of her life to her father and his work and she continued her father's work after he left and started her own contribution. Many would go to the extent of saying that she had no creativity of her own. This is incorrect. Her career prospered after her father's demise. She wrote many books on her own by firmly sticking to the rules set by her father and also extended her work in other areas where her father did not have the chance to contribute. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society)

Through her work with children and the idea of children going through analysis, she became famous. Additionally, her role as a teacher in a school helped her to acquire the insight into ego psychology. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society) She established the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic in London in 1947 and worked as its director after 1952. She was the author of numerous scientific books and papers and she assisted in setting up the yearly periodical Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, in 1945. (Anna Freud: Distinguished Women of Past and Present) She was full of activity on almost all days working on something original or improving something that was old. The succession of projects she handled came so frequently that she did not have any break between projects. She was completely devoted to her father's psychology and strongly believed that his thoughts were genuine and precise. In her lifetime spread over the twentieth century, she observed the transformations undergone by the world and society. She constantly worked on psychoanalysis and traveled everywhere her teaching took her. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society)

Analysis:

Anna developed a profound affection and devotion for her father and the field of psychoanalysis when she worked under the guidance of her father. Even though many said that she was 'her father's daughter', she was more autonomous than many would acknowledge. She did not develop an intimate attachment with her mother from the very start. She also did not get by with her brothers and sisters. She thought of being alone and not as one among them. However, she felt particularly close to her father. She recollected that all of her family went off in a boat and left her at home, either because the boat was too full or she was too small; but she did not grumble; but she got the appreciation and console from her father who was observing the whole scene.

Her father's console made her very happy and she did not worry about anything else. Her father too responded with similar affection on Anna. Her father wrote in his book titled "The Interpretation of Dreams" that Annerl had a male taste and force, and is smartened with wickedness. As Anna got older, he was pleased with her intellectual interest and displeasure with feminine behaviors. In spite of her attempts to incorporate herself into her mother and sisters' mesh of activities like men, knitting and beautiful clothing, Anna could not grab on to it. She stated that she wanted beautiful clothing and a number of children but she considered herself to be too shabby and found it difficult to get along with them. She persistently strived to match her sister Sophie's good-looking image, but could not make it in any area. The family called them as the 'beauty and the brains'. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society)

In the year 1901, Anna began her schooling at the age of six in a private elementary school. As her father was a professor, he had more customers and thus the family income increased. As a student she was very uninterested and agitated and complained about attending school. This gave her the pet name 'Black Devil'. In her later years in school, she entertained her restiveness by reading and writing ceaselessly. She says she has not learnt much from school. Her father's visitors to their home mostly educated her. From them she learnt many languages like Hebrew, German, English, French and Italian. When her family was separated from 1909-1912, she was first introduced into her father's world of psychoanalysis. At the age of fourteen she wrote a letter to her father stating that she had read some of her fathers' books and that he must not be horrified for that she is grown up and is interested in his works.

At the age of seventeen, Anna graduated from school in the early summer of 1912. But this made her think what she was going to become. In June of 1914 Anna Freud passed an exam to become a trainee in elementary school teaching, which launched her teaching profession, which inspired her to proceed in the field of child psychoanalysis. Anna used to write to her father seeking clarifications of psychoanalytic terms, even when they were in different places during holidays. This is where she got directly absorbed with her father's work. Her father held the idea that every practitioner should first take a self-analysis before going to that field. Thus she would send her father an account of her thoughts and he would scrutinize them for her. Freud gave more focus and insight into the Pre-Oedipal Stages after her father concluded her analysis in 1918-1922. As her father did not have any reports or progress notes, it can only be guessed that Anna's own personal problems forced her father into this area. During this time he gave more importance on a mother's part in a daughters' life against the fathers' role as being the lone inspiration for behavior. She interpreted her father's work and assisted him in enunciating his current works. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society)

From 1924-1929, Anna Freud used most of her time taking over her fathers' professional career. She became an associate of the Committee of her father's closest advisors in 1924. She was on the supervisory board of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1925, and began her work as a training analyst. Additionally, she also took over all the features of production of the Verlag, which is a psychoanalytic publication parallel to a magazine that her father created. She continued her father's crusades relating to Otto Rank. Otto Rank determined to emerge against Freudian viewpoints with The Trauma of Birth. This packed down Freud and enraged Anna Freud. But, Sigmund maintained a positive outlook and could not comprehend Anna's abhorrence. With this and the demise of Karl Abraham in Christmas of 1925, the organization of original creators of psychoanalysis was diminishing. All the proceedings lead Anna to the justification that she could no longer refute her father's impact on the budding of her career and to be thankful for his influence and the chances she was offered. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society)

Helen Deutsch established the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute by the end of 1925. Anna was the secretary. But, there were numerous troubles. Anna turned out to be moderator of the group and her aim was to become better than the other girls who were clashing and quarrelling. She was so deeply attached to this philosophy that she would not even allow herself the small despairs that sometimes came with her during menstrual periods and she used to say that she knows that it is so regularly with some women, but it should not be so with her. During this time, she started getting seriously concerned with Child Psychoanalysis. This was a fresh area of psychoanalysis that her father had set the foundation for with his 1909 case study of 'Little Hans'.

In addition to her father's work, she was very fascinated in the influence that the latest World War had on children who were affected, that is, parents expired, deserted or alienated. She started contacting with other leaders of this new field, and talked about problems dealing with child psychoanalysis. Anna, on her own, did not issue any serious statements on the subject matter until the publication of her first book in 1927 titled 'Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis'. It was a compilation of all her lectures, and a straight assault at Melanie Klein's theories. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society) The contradicting theoretical and technical differences between Melanie Klein's and Anna Freud's approaches resulted in the formation of two parallel groups by The British Psychoanalytical Society to avert a major separation in the institution. (Anna Freud: (http://www.geocities.com)

As Anna continued her analysis on children, it turned out to be obvious that her analysis of children varied from her father's analysis of adults. She disproved her father's Little Hans analysis and employed separate techniques with the children. Her father's statement that symptoms give a basis for diagnosis was not acceptable as children's symptoms are not the same as those of adults as per Anna. They are linked to specific developmental phases, and they are frequently temporary in subject. At the time her practice was rising, she was beginning to observe things inside herself that she wanted to work on if she were to be an efficient counselor. Dorothy T. Burlingham, a psychoanalyst, who was a mother of one of Anna's patients, was an immense sway on Anna. Each of these women turned out to be more and more reliant on one another. As their association proceeded to get nearer so did the rumor that their connection was more than companionship and bordered a lesbian affair. Anna frequently refuted these rumors and sustained it until her death. She maintained her work during this time period and wrote another book. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society)

This was titled Psychoanalysis for Teachers and Parents. It was a compilation of her lectures to the city of Hort on their lower-class day care system. The initial sign of Berlin Jewish psychoanalysts escaped Vienna for England. Henceforth, Anna Freud was made the 'second vice president' of the Vienna Society in 1933. She joined the editorial board of American Journal Psychoanalytic Quarterly and contributed for it in 1935 a Child Analysis issue devoted to her work in Vienna. From 1934-1936 she used most of her free time writing 'On Defense Mechanisms'. This is where her child psychoanalysis developed to adolescence. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society) She was more involved in the activities of the psyche than in its arrangement, and was specifically enthralled by the position of the ego in all this. Of course, Sigmund Freud used most of his attempts on the id and the unconscious part of psychic life. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)

As she correctly pointed out, the ego is the seat of observation from which we study the work of the id and the superego and the unconscious generally, and merits study in its own worth. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)Anna Freud's work emphasized the role of the ego in personality development and highlighted the application of defense mechanisms such as suppression. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society) She is perhaps best known for her book 'The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense' in which she offers a principally clear account of how the resistances work, including some particular notice to adolescents' use of defenses. This concentration on the ego started a development in psychoanalytic circles called ego psychology that nowadays stands for, debatably, the majority of Freudians. It takes Freud's previous work as a vital basis, but enlarges it into the more normal, realistic, everyday world of the ego. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)

Anna's areas of work were more practical, and most of her efforts were dedicated to the analysis of children and adolescents, and to advancing that analysis. Her father, nevertheless, had concentrated fully on adult patients. Even though the writings were mostly on development, it was from the standpoints of these adults. What do you do with the child, for whom family predicaments and shocks and fascinations are current events, not faint memories? To start with the relation between child and the therapist is different. As the child's parents are still very much a part of his or her life, therapist part cannot and should not attempt to seize it. At the same time, the therapist cannot act like another child but should behave like an authority. To tackle this "transference problem" Anna Freud discovered the best approach that came most naturally, that is, the therapist should be a caring adult and should neither a new pal nor a replacement parent. Her method appears authoritarian by the standards of many contemporary child therapies, but it might make further sense. One more problem with examining children is that their figurative capacities are not as developed as those of adults. Definitely, the younger ones may have difficulty explaining their emotional problems vocally. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)

Even older children are less probable to conceal their problems under complex symbols than adults. Nevertheless, the child's problems are very alive; there has not been much time to develop defenses. So the problems are nearer to the surface and likely to be uttered in more straight, less representative, behavioral and emotional languages. She assisted in setting up the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic in London from where her majority of contributions on personality came out. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)The Hampstead Clinic is at times articulated of as Anna Freud's extended family, and that is how it is frequently felt. At the clinic Anna and her staff conducted greatly commended weekly case study sessions that offered realistic and hypothetical depths into their work. Their method employed the use of developmental lines mapping theoretical normal growth from dependency to emotional self-reliance, and diagnostic patterns that allowed the analyst to disconnect and recognize the case specific factors that diverged from, or agreed with, regular development. (Anna Freud: (http://www.crystalinks.com)