Anna Freud: Brief Bio on the Leading pioneers in the field of psychology

Raina Susan Roopak, REG NO: 2120129

Class 1BBA-A, Christ University
Psychology: CIA 1
Mr. Suantak Demkhosei Vaiphei
15th September, 2021
Psychology CIA- Leading pioneers in the field of psychology

Anna Freud – Biography

Anna Freud was an Austrian- British psychoanalyst. She was born in 1895 in Vienna and
was the sixth and youngest child of the great psychologist Sigmund Freud and Martha
Bernays.
Early Life
From her early childhood, Anna resonated more with her father and was not attached to her
mother. She was jealous of her immediate elder sister and did not get along well with all her
other siblings. She admired her father greatly and took an interest in psychoanalysis at the
young age of 14. She had attended a private school. However, she says that school had not
taught her much and her greatest learnings were from her father and his associates and friends.
Career Advancement
Upon completing high school, Anna began working as a primary school teacher and also started
converting few of her father’s works into German. This increased her interest in psychoanalysis
and child psychology. She started her own analysis along with her father. She continued to
study the psychoanalytic literature and also began working with patients. In 1922, anna became
a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and presented her paper ‘Beating fantasies
and daydreams’ and started working with children psychoanalytically.
Major Contributions
In 1927, Anna published “Introduction to the technique of child analysis”. She was strongly
criticized by other psychologists and colleagues for this work. In 1936, she published her first
major book “The Ego and the mechanism of defence”. In this book she expanded on and
provided a clearer understanding of the ego defence mechanisms earlier proposed by her father.
In 1931, she started the Jackson nursery in Vienna for extremely deprived toddlers. In 1941,
anna established the Hampstead war nurseries to care for children, babies and toddlers who
were separated from their families due to the adversities of war.
Anna did much more than just live in her father’s shadow. Her own work expanded on her
father’s ideologies and theories but also created the field of child psychoanalysis. She created
the field of child psychoanalysis and her work provided greatly to the comprehension of child
psychology. She noted that children’s symptoms differed from those of adults and were often
related to developmental stages.
Awards and Recognition
• In 1965, she received the Dolly Madison Award.
• In 1967, she was named a Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
• In 1975, she was awarded an MD degree from the University of Vienna. The same year,
she also received the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold.
Psychology CIA- Leading pioneers in the field of psychology

Anna Freud in the Historical development of Psychology

• Sigmund Freud worked on the theories of psychoanalytic research in respect to adults.
He focused on the id, ego and superego that are major elements of an adult’s
personality.
• By contrast, Anna Freud mainly concentrated on working with children.
• Although Sigmund Freud believed that psychoanalysis could not be used with children,
Anna developed techniques for the same and made a major contribution to the field of
psychology by creating child psychoanalysis.
• Prior to Anna, several psychoanalysts had experimented with child. However, it was
Anna Freud who first systematised and refined child psychoanalysis into a distinct form
of therapy.
• Anna believed that child psychoanalysis should be limited to the basic theories of
psychoanalysis, but should be a distinct mode of therapy.
• She claimed that children should only be analysed when they arrived at the latency
period, which begins at the age of six. Before this age, she thought it was better to focus
on the child's surrounding environment to support his/her psychosexual and emotional
development and prevent the neurosis from taking root.
• Anna Freud's work is based on the notion that every kid should be recognized as a
unique individual. She wanted to form a therapeutic partnership with each child based
on their individual requirements.
• She recognized that children have difficulty being still and concentrated, and that they
could only be expected to engage in limited free association. Instead, she let her young
patients walk around the treatment room as they pleased.
• She also encouraged children to use drawing materials by making them easily available.
These paintings were considered crucial methods of expression, just as important as the
spoken word.
Psychology CIA- Leading pioneers in the field of psychology

Child psychology
• Child psychology is a broad field that studies how people change as they grow up from
birth to adolescence, attempting to explain why these significant changes
• Anna Freud focused on using psychoanalysis as a method to study different behavioural
phenomenon in children.
• Psychoanalytic treatment enables children and adolescents to effectively mange and
understand their feelings, thoughts and emotions. They can introspect and find out their
negative emotions and find coping strategies to resolve the same.
• In recent times, child psychoanalytic therapy is also focusing on adopted children or
children in foster care.
• The covid-19 pandemic posed challenges on the psychoanalytic therapy. Caroline
Sehon talked about a seven-year-old girl who had been seen face-to-face in the office
for three years prior to the pandemic. She describes the first 6 months of the tele
analysis, demonstrating how the child used the technology as a play object to express
her struggles, how unconscious communication persisted even though patient

Careers in Child Psychology

1. School Counsellor: They provide consulting services to students, offering support not
only academically, but also with personal, social and professional problems. School
consultants help students choose classes and schools and aid explore potential
professional paths. They also work with students who need help with personal problems
or social conflicts, and are a resource for young people trying to develop new skills.

2. Developmental Psychologist: Development psychologists work to understand the

ways in which humans grow and change throughout their lives. Some development
psychologists are specifically focused on the development of old age or life, while
others devote their time to study the development of the child. Some development
psychologists, instead of conducting research, spend their time to work directly with
children. They evaluate and diagnose any delays and development disabilities and
design interventions to overcome them.
Psychology CIA- Leading pioneers in the field of psychology

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Freud

• https://www.annafreud.org/schools-and-colleges/

• https://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/anna-freud.html

• https://www.britannica.com/science/child-psychology