Anna Freud
| Anna Freud | |
|---|---|
Freud in 1957
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| Born | 3 December 1895 Vienna, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 9 October 1982 (aged 86) London, England |
| Nationality | Austrian (1895-1946) British (1946-1982) |
| Occupation | Psychoanalyst |
| Known for | Work on the nature of ego |
| Parent(s) |
Sigmund Freud Martha Bernays |
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was an Austrian-British psychoanalyst. She was the 6th and last child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contributed to the field of psychoanalysis.
Alongside Melanie Klein, she may be considered the founder of psychoanalytic child psychology: as her father put it, child analysis "had received a powerful impetus through 'the work of Frau Melanie Klein and of my daughter, Anna Freud.'" Compared to her father, her work emphasized the importance of the ego and its ability to be trained socially. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Freud as the 99th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Anna Freud was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary on 3 December 1895. She was the youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She grew up in "comfortable bourgeois circumstances." Anna Freud appears to have had a comparatively unhappy childhood, in which she "never made a close or pleasurable relationship with her mother, and was instead nurtured by their Catholic nurse Josephine." She had difficulties getting along with her siblings, specifically with her sister Sophie Freud. Sophie, who was the more attractive child, represented a threat in the struggle for the affection of their father: "the two young Freuds developed their version of a common sisterly division of territories: 'beauty' and 'brains', and their father once spoke of her 'age-old jealousy of Sophie.'
As well as this rivalry between the two sisters, Anna had other difficulties growing up – 'a somewhat troubled youngster who complained to her father in candid letters how all sorts of unreasonable thoughts and feelings plagued her'. It seems that 'in general, she was relentlessly competitive with her siblings...and was repeatedly sent to health farms for thorough rest, walks, and some extra pounds to fill out her all too slender shape': she may have suffered from depression which caused eating disorders.
The close relationship between Anna and her father was different from the rest of her family. She was a lively child with a reputation for mischief. Freud wrote to his friend Wilhelm Fliess in 1899: "Anna has become downright beautiful through naughtiness." Freud is said to refer to her in his diaries more than others in the family .
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