Anna Freud Research Paper
Lifespan and Personality Development
Lifespan and Personality Development
Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, was a famous psychologist in the 21st century and was well known for her studies in psychoanalysis and child psychology. Anna was born in Vienna, Austria on December 3, 1895, and was the sixth child born in the Freud family. Anna, was extremely close with her father, and was influenced by him, but her work went well beyond her father’s ideas. She was known as the founder of child psychoanalysis, defense mechanisms, and she also made contributions towards the studies of ego psychology. Although Anna Freud never earned a higher degree, her work in psychoanalysis and child psychology contributed to her eminence …show more content…
in the field of psychology (Cherry, 2013). Anna Freud’s Childhood Growing up as the sixth born, Anna struggled competing with her siblings, especially her sister Sophie. It was said that Anna’s sister Sophie was more of the attractive one and Anna had more of the brains. Not, only did she have rivalry with her siblings, Anna did not have a great relationship with her mother. She wrote letters to her father, describing her inner feelings of unreasonable thoughts and feelings that plagued her. She was known for being the “child of mischief”. As a result of her unhappiness, she was sent to health farms for rest, salutary walks, and to put on weight because she was too thin. Because Anna, always felt like she was competing for her individuality, she could have been suffering with depression which may have caused an eating disorder. The relationship that Anna and her father had was different from all the rest on the children the Freud family.
Anna’s beginning Anna and her father had an extremely close relationship.
It was said that her father wrote more about her in his diaries than any other of the children. Because Anna was extremely close with her father, she learned more from him than she did in school. When she was 15, she began reading her father’s work:” a dream she had at age of nineteen months”, which appeared in “The Interpretation of Dreams”. Anna, proceeded to finish her education at Cottage Lyceum, in Vienna in 1912, and after school she was still struggling with depression and was unsure of her future. After finishing school, she went to live with her grandmother in Italy, and then shortly after she was forced to leave because war was declared. In 1914, she went back to Vienna where she finished school, and became a trainee at her old school and then she eventually became a teacher. In 1918, her father started psychoanalysis on her and she became seriously involved with this new profession (Wikipedia, 2013). She taught for three years, and then finally quit, due to tuberculosis. Her analysis was completed in 1922 and thereupon she presented the paper "Beating Fantasies and Daydreams" to the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, subsequently becoming a member. In 1923, Freud began her own psychoanalytical practice with children and two years later she was teaching at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Training Institute on the technique of child analysis. From 1925 until 1934, she was the Secretary of the International Psychoanalytical Association while she continued child analysis and seminars and conferences on the subject. In 1935, Freud became director of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Training Institute and in the following year she published her influential study of the "ways and means by which the ego wards off displeasure and anxiety", The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. It became a founding work of ego psychology and established Freud’s reputation as a pioneering
theoretician. In 1938 the Freuds had to flee from Austria as a consequence of the Nazis ' intensifying harassment of Jews in Vienna following the Anschluss by Germany. Her father 's health had deteriorated severely due to jaw cancer, so she had to organize the family 's emigration to London. Here she continued her work and took care of her father, who finally died in the autumn of 1939. When Anna arrived in London, a conflict came to a head between her and Melanie Klein regarding developmental theories of children, culminating in the Controversial discussions.
The war gave Freud opportunity to observe the effect of deprivation of parental care on children. She set up a centre for young war victims, called "The Hampstead War Nursery". Here the children got foster care although mothers were encouraged to visit as often as possible. The underlying idea was to give children the opportunity to form attachments by providing continuity of relationships. This was continued, after the war, at the Bulldogs Bank Home, which was an orphanage, run by colleagues of Freud that took care of children who survived concentration camps. Based on these observations Anna published a series of studies with her longtime friend, Dorothy Burlingham-Tiffany on the impact of stress on children and the ability to find substitute affections among peers when parents cannot give them. From the 1950s until the end of her life Freud travelled regularly to the United States to lecture, to teach and to visit friends. During the 1970s she was concerned with the problems of emotionally deprived and socially disadvantaged children, and she studied deviations and delays in development. At Yale Law School, she taught seminars on crime and the family: this led to a transatlantic collaboration with Joseph Goldstein and Albert Solnit on children and the law, published as Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973). (Wikipedia, 2013). Focusing thereafter on research, observation and treatment of children, Anna Freud established a group of prominent child developmental analysts (which included Erik Erikson, Edith Jacobson and Margaret Mahler) who noticed that children 's symptoms were ultimately analogue to personality disorders among adults and thus often related to developmental stages. Her book Normality and Pathology in Childhood (1965) summarized 'the use of developmental lines charting theoretical normal growth "from dependency to emotional self-reliance" '. Through these then revolutionary ideas Anna provided us with a comprehensive developmental theory and the concept of developmental lines, which combined her father 's important drive model with more recent object relations theories emphasizing the importance of parents in child development processes. Nevertheless her basic loyalty to her father 's work remained unimpaired, and it might indeed be said that 'she devoted her life to protecting her father 's legacy... In her theoretical work there would be little criticism of him, and she would make what is still the finest contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding of passivity ', or what she termed 'altruistic surrender... excessive concern and anxiety for the lives of his love objects '. Jacques Lacan called 'Anna Freud the plumb line of psychoanalysis. Well, the plumb line doesn 't make a building... [but] it allows us to gauge the vertical of certain problems ', and by preserving so much of Freud 's legacy and standards she may indeed have served as something of a living yardstick (Wikipedia, 2013).
References
Cherry, K. (2013). Psychology. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_annafreud.htm
Wikipedia. (2013). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Freud#Biography
Lifespan and Personality Development
Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, was a famous psychologist in the 21st century and was well known for her studies in psychoanalysis and child psychology. Anna was born in Vienna, Austria on December 3, 1895, and was the sixth child born in the Freud family. Anna, was extremely close with her father, and was influenced by him, but her work went well beyond her father’s ideas. She was known as the founder of child psychoanalysis, defense mechanisms, and she also made contributions towards the studies of ego psychology. Although Anna Freud never earned a higher degree, her work in psychoanalysis and child psychology contributed to her eminence …show more content…
in the field of psychology (Cherry, 2013). Anna Freud’s Childhood Growing up as the sixth born, Anna struggled competing with her siblings, especially her sister Sophie. It was said that Anna’s sister Sophie was more of the attractive one and Anna had more of the brains. Not, only did she have rivalry with her siblings, Anna did not have a great relationship with her mother. She wrote letters to her father, describing her inner feelings of unreasonable thoughts and feelings that plagued her. She was known for being the “child of mischief”. As a result of her unhappiness, she was sent to health farms for rest, salutary walks, and to put on weight because she was too thin. Because Anna, always felt like she was competing for her individuality, she could have been suffering with depression which may have caused an eating disorder. The relationship that Anna and her father had was different from all the rest on the children the Freud family.
Anna’s beginning Anna and her father had an extremely close relationship.
It was said that her father wrote more about her in his diaries than any other of the children. Because Anna was extremely close with her father, she learned more from him than she did in school. When she was 15, she began reading her father’s work:” a dream she had at age of nineteen months”, which appeared in “The Interpretation of Dreams”. Anna, proceeded to finish her education at Cottage Lyceum, in Vienna in 1912, and after school she was still struggling with depression and was unsure of her future. After finishing school, she went to live with her grandmother in Italy, and then shortly after she was forced to leave because war was declared. In 1914, she went back to Vienna where she finished school, and became a trainee at her old school and then she eventually became a teacher. In 1918, her father started psychoanalysis on her and she became seriously involved with this new profession (Wikipedia, 2013). She taught for three years, and then finally quit, due to tuberculosis. Her analysis was completed in 1922 and thereupon she presented the paper "Beating Fantasies and Daydreams" to the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, subsequently becoming a member. In 1923, Freud began her own psychoanalytical practice with children and two years later she was teaching at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Training Institute on the technique of child analysis. From 1925 until 1934, she was the Secretary of the International Psychoanalytical Association while she continued child analysis and seminars and conferences on the subject. In 1935, Freud became director of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Training Institute and in the following year she published her influential study of the "ways and means by which the ego wards off displeasure and anxiety", The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. It became a founding work of ego psychology and established Freud’s reputation as a pioneering
theoretician. In 1938 the Freuds had to flee from Austria as a consequence of the Nazis ' intensifying harassment of Jews in Vienna following the Anschluss by Germany. Her father 's health had deteriorated severely due to jaw cancer, so she had to organize the family 's emigration to London. Here she continued her work and took care of her father, who finally died in the autumn of 1939. When Anna arrived in London, a conflict came to a head between her and Melanie Klein regarding developmental theories of children, culminating in the Controversial discussions.
The war gave Freud opportunity to observe the effect of deprivation of parental care on children. She set up a centre for young war victims, called "The Hampstead War Nursery". Here the children got foster care although mothers were encouraged to visit as often as possible. The underlying idea was to give children the opportunity to form attachments by providing continuity of relationships. This was continued, after the war, at the Bulldogs Bank Home, which was an orphanage, run by colleagues of Freud that took care of children who survived concentration camps. Based on these observations Anna published a series of studies with her longtime friend, Dorothy Burlingham-Tiffany on the impact of stress on children and the ability to find substitute affections among peers when parents cannot give them. From the 1950s until the end of her life Freud travelled regularly to the United States to lecture, to teach and to visit friends. During the 1970s she was concerned with the problems of emotionally deprived and socially disadvantaged children, and she studied deviations and delays in development. At Yale Law School, she taught seminars on crime and the family: this led to a transatlantic collaboration with Joseph Goldstein and Albert Solnit on children and the law, published as Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973). (Wikipedia, 2013). Focusing thereafter on research, observation and treatment of children, Anna Freud established a group of prominent child developmental analysts (which included Erik Erikson, Edith Jacobson and Margaret Mahler) who noticed that children 's symptoms were ultimately analogue to personality disorders among adults and thus often related to developmental stages. Her book Normality and Pathology in Childhood (1965) summarized 'the use of developmental lines charting theoretical normal growth "from dependency to emotional self-reliance" '. Through these then revolutionary ideas Anna provided us with a comprehensive developmental theory and the concept of developmental lines, which combined her father 's important drive model with more recent object relations theories emphasizing the importance of parents in child development processes. Nevertheless her basic loyalty to her father 's work remained unimpaired, and it might indeed be said that 'she devoted her life to protecting her father 's legacy... In her theoretical work there would be little criticism of him, and she would make what is still the finest contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding of passivity ', or what she termed 'altruistic surrender... excessive concern and anxiety for the lives of his love objects '. Jacques Lacan called 'Anna Freud the plumb line of psychoanalysis. Well, the plumb line doesn 't make a building... [but] it allows us to gauge the vertical of certain problems ', and by preserving so much of Freud 's legacy and standards she may indeed have served as something of a living yardstick (Wikipedia, 2013).
References
Cherry, K. (2013). Psychology. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_annafreud.htm
Wikipedia. (2013). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Freud#Biography