You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Robert Cole's biographical studies are clear, ingenuous, and forthright. Nowhere more than in this study of Anna Freud does he show his identification with, and admiration for, his biographee. This is an unusual book in several ways.
Unlike most biographies, the volume does not give a chronological account of the subject's life. In a sequence of studies, Coles devotes chapters to various aspects of her activities, as a teacher, theorist, healer, leader, writer, and so on. Anna Freud led what might be termed a strange life, and yet she was a fine person who was happy and productive. So far as this reviewer knows, only one person, Ernest Jones, made clear his wish to marry her, but neither marriage nor Jones interested her in this way. Analyzed by her father, she devoted herself to his care in sickness and to his work. Although she could disagree with people such as Melanie Klein and her followers, she did not stir up the enmity that her father experienced. Perhaps he cleared the way and made battles unnecessary for her. As is well known, Freud was a great fighter and did not relent once he began a quarrel; thus he never yielded to the efforts of Stekel to overcome their dispute, but Anna could allow the distance between her and Sophie Freud to melt away as described in the latter's “My Three Mothers.” It has been said that one of Freud's arguments, his approval of lay analysis, was determined by his wish that Anna replace him as the leader of the psychoanalytic movement.
What is most impressive to me is Anna Freud's grasp on reality in a matter pointed out by her father. Sigmund Freud said it is not the purpose of psychoanalysis to make anyone happy; it endeavors to remove the unhappiness caused by neurosis so that it does not add to the burdens of misery that life can inflict on all of us. Coles puts this very neatly. He says that Anna Freud was telling her readers: