Anna Freud C.B.E. 1895-1982: An Appreciation

The death of Anna Freud, aged 86 years, on October 9th 1982, is of great significance in the history of psychoanalysis: it marks the loss of the founder of child psychoanalysis and also the loss of the closest surviving link to her father Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. We have lost that astonishing direct connection to Freud which his daughter gave us, which she indicated clearly sometimes in her rivetting prefaces to comments “my father said …”. Anna Freud's death too was a significant and sad personal moment in history in the lives of many, including many Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic trained child psychotherapists, whose lives would have been so different had the Freuds not moved to London before the war. There are some whose long professional association with Miss Freud spans nearly half a century and for whom her death is a most profound personal loss.

Born in Vienna, the youngest of six children, on December 3rd 1895, Anna Freud's professional life began in education, as a secondary school teacher. Whilst teaching she began a training analysis, published her first paper in 1922 on “Fantasy Life in Children” and in this year became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. This first paper began a stream of published works. “The Ego and The Mechanisms of Defence” was published in 1936. Her work with her friend and collaborator Dorothy Burlingham produced “Young Children in Wartime” and “Infants without Families” . “Normality and Pathology” in Childhood was published in 1965. Her recent work was on children and the law written with Solnit and Goldstein and published as “Beyond the Best Interests of the Child” and “Before the Best Interests of the Child” . Anna Freud's work now in eight volumes, includes many lesser works, some small masterpieces in their simplicity, economy and clarity. All clinicians have their favourites, mine include “On Losing and Being Lost” a brief paper written in 1967 “Certain Types and Stages of Social Maladjustmen