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Dear Editor
The Sunday evening TV series on The Self in the Twentieth Century which ended on 7 April 2002 brought us salutory enlightenment as to how big business and, latterly, politicians have exploited for their own ends the often alien and unwelcome theories of Freud about how human psychology is rooted in our physical constitution. Their success in so doing suggests that Freud was right.
However, to blame him for the way his views have been used is surely a case of ‘shooting the messenger’. These matters were in the public domain around two decades before Bernais explained them to those interested in advertising. How Freud himself used them was to promote greater self-awareness in his patients so that they would no longer be blindly driven by desires but be able to lead more integrated lives with free use of reason. In the series, whatever possible in the way of accusation was raked up without full consideration of the facts, in order to discredit Freud and his followers.
His daughter, Anna, was particularly horrendously and misleadingly portrayed. It is suggested that her treatment of maladjusted children was aimed at imposing conformity on society. In fact, it released her small patients from unbearable conflicts which had prevented them from pleasurably participating in ordinary childhood activities and learning. They may also have been preventing others from doing so.
Had Anna Freud been more regardful of her reputation and less concerned to try to help her friend's suicidal daughter, she would not have taken the distraught young woman into her home. Earlier, the girl's childhood must, I think, have been terrorized by Hitler's persecution, or traumatized by it through attempts to shield her from it, perhaps by separation from her family. There are people whose psychological state is analogous to that of someone with terminal cancer, whose doctors are not blamed for their death.
This country owes Anna Freud a debt of gratitude for the wartime nursery she ran in L