- Person
- Anna Freud
- Lived
- 1895–1982
- Field
- Child psychoanalysis
- From
- Austrian-British
The story
During the Second World War, Anna Freud and her lifelong friend Dorothy Burlingham ran the Hampstead War Nurseries in London, caring for children whose homes had been destroyed or whose families had been separated. The nurseries were also a place of careful observation, and when the war ended Anna Freud wanted to pass on what she and her colleagues had learned.
In 1947 she and the analyst Kate Friedlaender established the Hampstead Child Therapy Course to train child therapists. A children's clinic followed, opening at 12 Maresfield Gardens, the same Hampstead street as her home, and in 1952 it was granted charity status. The course and clinic together became a centre for therapy, training and research. According to the Anna Freud Centre, the clinic was dedicated to clinical practice and research in child analysis and trained the first generation of child psychotherapists to work in Britain's newly established National Health Service.
With English and American trainees passing through, Anna Freud's influence grew rapidly. Staff held weekly case-study sessions and developed diagnostic profiles and developmental lines, tools for charting a child's progress against the normal course of growth from dependency to emotional self-reliance. One staff member recalled that the clinic was sometimes spoken of as Anna Freud's extended family. In 1954 she added a nursery offering pre-school education based on knowledge of child development. Funding came from many sources, including the US National Institute of Mental Health.
Through the 1960s and 1970s the clinic became a hub for scholarship, attracting academics and visitors from around the world and respected as a world leader in child mental health. Its research fed into major works such as Normality and Pathology in Childhood, published in 1965.
After Anna Freud's death in 1982 her colleagues renamed the clinic the Anna Freud Centre. In the following decades it forged close links with University College London and the NHS, pioneered scientific studies of the outcomes of child therapy, opened a school for children at risk of exclusion and launched the UK Trauma Council. Today the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families continues her work in research, training and services.
Why it matters
The clinic Anna Freud founded trained Britain's first NHS child psychotherapists and remains one of the world's leading centres for children's mental health.
About Anna Freud
Sigmund Freud’s youngest daughter, a refugee from Nazi Vienna who founded child psychoanalysis and ego psychology and built London’s Hampstead clinic for children in need.
More about Anna Freud
- Anna Freud's 1927 book founded child psychoanalysisAnna Freud's first book, Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis (1927), laid the foundation for direct therapeutic work with children.
- Anna Freud explained the mind's defence mechanismsIn 1936 Anna Freud published The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, a founding work of ego psychology and one of the most influential books in psychoanalysis.
- Anna Freud mapped how normal childhood unfoldsAnna Freud's 1965 book Normality and Pathology in Childhood introduced developmental lines and helped establish the field of developmental psychopathology.
- Anna Freud brought child psychology into family lawAt Yale Law School, Anna Freud worked with Joseph Goldstein and Albert Solnit on Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973), a book on children and the law.
- Anna Freud cared for children made homeless by the BlitzFrom 1941 to 1945 Anna Freud ran the Hampstead War Nurseries in London, giving foster care to children whose homes and families had been disrupted by the war.
- Anna Freud opened a nursery for poor toddlers in ViennaIn 1937 Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham opened the Jackson Nursery in Vienna for children under two from impoverished families.
- Anna Freud began as a gifted teacher in ViennaBefore becoming an analyst, Anna Freud was praised for her gift for teaching; in 1927 she helped found a progressive school whose staff included Erik Erikson.
- Anna Freud studied child survivors of TheresienstadtAnna Freud's study of young orphans from the Theresienstadt camp, published in 1951, showed how children could find substitute affection among their peers.
Sources
- Our history Anna Freud Centre
- Anna Freud Jewish Women's Archive
- Anna Freud Wikipedia
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