Anna Freud—Psychiatrist

I have chosen the title 'Anna Freud—Psychiatrist' for my contribution to this Commemorative Meeting because of her great interest in psychotic disorders. It was through this interest that I became associated with the Hampstead Clinic. I first met Anna Freud in 1946 through the good offices of Dr Martin James. She supervised my first analytic case. She patiently helped me to find my way with the patient, pointing out resistances and transferences, while allowing me to experience the uncertainty which we all feel when confronted with associations and behaviour which we cannot understand. This stood me in good stead when some years later I was working with psychotic patients whose illness had reached a state of chronicity.

I left London in 1952 and had no further contact with Anna Freud until 1955 when Dorothy Burlingham, with whom I had been in analysis, drew her attention to some work which two colleagues and I had undertaken on long standing hospitalized schizophrenic patients (Freeman et al., 1958). We were invited to the Hampstead Clinic to describe our study.

When I was a candidate and a Senior Registrar at a psychiatric hospital it never crossed my mind that Anna Freud might be interested in psychotic illnesses. I should have known better, because anyone reading the last section of 'The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence'(A. Freud, 1936) will recognize that she was familiar with the phenomena which are characteristic of established cases of schizophrenia. In later years she told us of her experiences at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Vienna. She had spent some time there becoming acquainted with the different kinds of psychoses and organic mental states. The Professor was Wagner-Jauregg. He was the man who, in 1917, introduced malarial treatment for General Paralysis of the Insane, a condition rarely seen today in its full development thanks to penicillin. Anna Freud confessed that she stood in awe of the great man, preferring to address her quest