FREUD, ANNA

FREUD, ANNA (1895–1982), psychoanalyst. Anna Freud was the youngest daughter of sigmund freud , and was his companion on his vacation trips and his nurse during his prolonged   illnesses. Her devotion to her father brought her into increasing contact with the developing thought and practice of psychoanalysis and she grew interested in child psychology. Between 1915 and 1920 she worked in her profession as a primary school teacher, deepened her knowledge in psychoanalysis, and started analysis as her father's patient. At the age of 28 she opened her own psychoanalytic practice, right across Sigmund Freud's treatment room in Berggasse 19. In 1927 she published a paper Einfuehrung in die Technik der Kinderanalyse (Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis, 1928), in which she set out the analytical technique she had evolved. In 1936 she published Das Ich und die Abwehrmechanismen (The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, 1937) which described the ways by which painful ideas and emotions are warded off from consciousness and direct expression, e.g., by repression and replacement by the opposite idea. This book was a pioneer contribution to ego psychology and in understanding the adolescent. She escaped from Austria with her father in 1938 and went with him to London, where Sigmund Freud died in 1939 and she continued to live until the end of her life. During World War II, together with her friend Dorothy Burlingham, she built up the Hampstead nurseries, where they took care of children separated from their families. In three books the two colleagues documented their experiences there, describing the treatment of children under conditions of war stress. They also described the development of children from narcissism to socialization, and set out the problems in the emotional life of institutional children despite their receiving advantages in physical care. These books were Young Children in Wartime (1942); Infants without Families (1943); and Warand Children (1943). The Hampstead nurseries closed in 1945. In 1947, with the help of kate friedlander , Freud founded the Child Therapy Course. In 1951 she became director of the clinic which was opened in conjunction with the course. Freud's book Normality and Pathology in Childhood (1965) is a comprehensive summation of her thought. Freud's contribution to child analytic therapy and child psychology was fundamental. She was able to demonstrate the validity of the reconstructions made by Sigmund Freud of child development and pathology through his analysis of adults. Moreover she was able to add considerably to the information by her methods of direct observation of children. Of special interest was her employment of psychological understanding in the education of children and in preventive work with the child through its parents and educators. Her contribution to the knowledge of the reaction of young children separated from their parents and deprived of emotional relationships, particularly in institutions, has had a wide effect in social policy and direct child care. From 1968 her collected works appeared under the title The Writings of Anna Freud. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: E. Pumpian-Mindlin, in: F. Alexander, et al. (eds.), Psychoanalytic Pioneers (1966), 519–33; Sandler, in: J.G. Howells (ed.), Modern Perspectives in Child Psychiatry (1965), includes bibliography, 250f. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: E. Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud: a biography (1989); U. Henrik Peters, "Anna Freud," in: H.J. Schultz (ed.), Es ist ein Weinen in der Welt (1990); R. Coles, Anna Freud: The Dream of Psychoanalysis (1992); W. Salber, Sigmund und Anna Freud (1999); R. Edgecumbe, Anna Freud: a View of Development, Disturbance and Therapeutic Techniques (2000); D.A. Rothe (ed.), "… als käm ich heim zu Vater und Schwester": Lou Andreas-Salomé–Anna Freud Briefwechsel 1919–1937 (2004). (Louis Miller / Mirjam Triendl (2nd ed.)