Intro
Anna Freud contributed an understanding of children to psychoanalysis.1 Her father, Sigmund Freud, pioneered psychoanalysis: a set of therapeutic methods and techniques focused on subconscious thoughts, feelings, desires, and motivations. Anna built on and was inspired by her father’s work and legacy but did more than live in her father’s shadow.2
Anna is most well-known as the founder of child psychoanalysis, which applies the tenets of psychoanalysis to children aged 6 years old and up.3 While her father’s use of psychotherapy - the application of psychoanalytic concepts - worked to help adults reconstruct conceptualizations of their childhoods, Anna was expressly interested in helping children navigate their thoughts and feelings as they occurred.
Anna believed that every child should be recognized as a person in their own right, and explored this idea in her 1927 publication, Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis.1 She also expanded on her father’s work by identifying different types of defense mechanisms that we use to protect ourselves in her 1936 book, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense.
Her work extending Sigmund’s psychoanalytic defense mechanisms and pioneering the subset of child psychoanalysis have contributed greatly to public understanding of child psychology. Child psychotherapy has since developed into a well-known therapeutic technique and Anna’s work has inspired important institutions such as the Anna Freud Centre in England, which provides mental health support and funding for children.4
I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.
- Anna Freud
