Memorial Tributes

It was in the two capital cities of Vienna and London that Anna Freud made her contributions to psychoanalysis, both pure and applied. The first cosmopolitan centre, with its intellectual stimulation (including her father's tutelage), was the cradle of her creativity; the second saw its full fruition. Between the two phases came the Anschluss; and it was the dislocation in terms of geography and circumstance that formed the dividing line. The work itself, in spite of the tragic upheaval, was a continuum which, for all its variety and breadth of application, formed an unbroken and developing series of contributions which added immeasurably to our knowledge of human development.

Anna Freud began her career, however, as a school-teacher; and it has rightly been said of her that she was a teacher all her life. No-one who heard her lecture could fail to be impressed by the cogency of her argument or the clarity of her style. Yet she never went to university; and later in life, when so many doctorates came her way, she took pleasure from the fact that all her degrees were honorary.

She was the only one of Sigmund and Martha Freud's six children to follow her father in her chosen profession. She became an analyst of adults who, more or less concurrently, became engaged in similar work with children. Her first paper, published in 1922, concerned the co-existence of beating fantasies and pleasurable daydreams in children. Its presentation brought her membership of the Viennese Psychoanalytical Society. She practised from her home, sharing the waiting room with her father. She has described, on more than one occasion, how she once complained to her father that all her patients told her they would rather be treated by him. His rejoinder was short and to the point: all his patients would rather be treated by her.

Her devotion to her father was unswerving: she was his secretary, amanuensis and, later, devoted nurse. But it would be wrong to think of her as someone who simply stood