- Person
- Anna Freud
- Lived
- 1895–1982
- Field
- Child psychoanalysis
- From
- Austrian-British
The story
In the 1930s Austria's economic and political situation deteriorated, and poverty spread in Vienna. Anna Freud, by then director of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Training Institute and author of The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, was increasingly concerned about the plight of the poor. With her lifelong friend Dorothy Burlingham, she became involved in charitable work.
In 1937 the two women had the chance to combine that charity with their research. Edith Jackson, an American psychiatrist who had been analysed by Sigmund Freud and trained in child analysis by Anna Freud, provided the funding for a nursery for children under the age of two. Its aims were to meet the needs of children from impoverished families and to advance psychoanalytic research into early childhood. At the time, an organised day nursery for children so young was almost unknown, and it was described as an experimental day nursery for toddlers.
Anna Freud and Burlingham, who ran the nursery, observed the children's behaviour closely and experimented with feeding patterns. The children were allowed to choose their own food and to organise their own play. Anna Freud recorded her surprise that parents, some of whom had been reduced to begging, valued the nursery most not because it fed and clothed their children, but because the children learned so much there: to move freely, to eat independently, to speak and to express their preferences.
The Nazi takeover of Austria in March 1938 forced the nursery to close after only a few months, and the Freud family fled to London as Jewish refugees. Yet the experiment had lasting value. Its systematic record keeping and reporting provided models for Anna Freud's later work with young children.
When she and Burlingham opened the Hampstead War Nurseries in London in 1941, they based them on the approach tested in Vienna, and several of the Jackson Nursery's staff, who had also fled the Nazis, worked alongside them again. The line from this small Viennese nursery runs through the wartime nurseries to the Hampstead Clinic and today's Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families.
Why it matters
The Jackson Nursery combined practical help for poor families with pioneering research into how toddlers develop, creating a model for Anna Freud's later work with children.
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 founded the Hampstead Child Therapy ClinicAnna Freud founded the Hampstead Child Therapy Course in 1947 and its clinic in 1952, training the first generation of child psychotherapists for Britain's NHS.
- 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 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
- Anna Freud Jewish Women's Archive
- Anna Freud Wikipedia
- Our history Anna Freud Centre
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