Anna Freud Devoted Herself to Term Paper

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It was a compilation of all her lectures, and a straight assault at Melanie Klein's theories. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society) The contradicting theoretical and technical differences between Melanie Klein's and Anna Freud's approaches resulted in the formation of two parallel groups by The British Psychoanalytical Society to avert a major separation in the institution. (Anna Freud: (http://www.geocities.com)

As Anna continued her analysis on children, it turned out to be obvious that her analysis of children varied from her father's analysis of adults. She disproved her father's Little Hans analysis and employed separate techniques with the children. Her father's statement that symptoms give a basis for diagnosis was not acceptable as children's symptoms are not the same as those of adults as per Anna. They are linked to specific developmental phases, and they are frequently temporary in subject. At the time her practice was rising, she was beginning to observe things inside herself that she wanted to work on if she were to be an efficient counselor. Dorothy T. Burlingham, a psychoanalyst, who was a mother of one of Anna's patients, was an immense sway on Anna. Each of these women turned out to be more and more reliant on one another. As their association proceeded to get nearer so did the rumor that their connection was more than companionship and bordered a lesbian affair. Anna frequently refuted these rumors and sustained it until her death. She maintained her work during this time period and wrote another book. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society)

This was titled Psychoanalysis for Teachers and Parents. It was a compilation of her lectures to the city of Hort on their lower-class day care system. The initial sign of Berlin Jewish psychoanalysts escaped Vienna for England. Henceforth, Anna Freud was made the 'second vice president' of the Vienna Society in 1933. She joined the editorial board of American Journal Psychoanalytic Quarterly and contributed for it in 1935 a Child Analysis issue devoted to her work in Vienna. From 1934-1936 she used most of her free time writing 'On Defense Mechanisms'. This is where her child psychoanalysis developed to adolescence. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society) She was more involved in the activities of the psyche than in its arrangement, and was specifically enthralled by the position of the ego in all this. Of course, Sigmund Freud used most of his attempts on the id and the unconscious part of psychic life. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)

As she correctly pointed out, the ego is the seat of observation from which we study the work of the id and the superego and the unconscious generally, and merits study in its own worth. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)Anna Freud's work emphasized the role of the ego in personality development and highlighted the application of defense mechanisms such as suppression. (Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society) She is perhaps best known for her book 'The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense' in which she offers a principally clear account of how the resistances work, including some particular notice to adolescents' use of defenses. This concentration on the ego started a development in psychoanalytic circles called ego psychology that nowadays stands for, debatably, the majority of Freudians. It takes Freud's previous work as a vital basis, but enlarges it into the more normal, realistic, everyday world of the ego. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)

Anna's areas of work were more practical, and most of her efforts were dedicated to the analysis of children and adolescents, and to advancing that analysis. Her father, nevertheless, had concentrated fully on adult patients. Even though the writings were mostly on development, it was from the standpoints of these adults. What do you do with the child, for whom family predicaments and shocks and fascinations are current events, not faint memories? To start with the relation between child and the therapist is different. As the child's parents are still very much a part of his or her life, therapist part cannot and should not attempt to seize it. At the same time, the therapist cannot act like another child but should behave like an authority. To tackle this "transference problem" Anna Freud discovered the best approach that came most naturally, that is, the therapist should be a caring adult and should neither a new pal nor a replacement parent.

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Her method appears authoritarian by the standards of many contemporary child therapies, but it might make further sense. One more problem with examining children is that their figurative capacities are not as developed as those of adults. Definitely, the younger ones may have difficulty explaining their emotional problems vocally. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)

Even older children are less probable to conceal their problems under complex symbols than adults. Nevertheless, the child's problems are very alive; there has not been much time to develop defenses. So the problems are nearer to the surface and likely to be uttered in more straight, less representative, behavioral and emotional languages. She assisted in setting up the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic in London from where her majority of contributions on personality came out. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)The Hampstead Clinic is at times articulated of as Anna Freud's extended family, and that is how it is frequently felt. At the clinic Anna and her staff conducted greatly commended weekly case study sessions that offered realistic and hypothetical depths into their work. Their method employed the use of developmental lines mapping theoretical normal growth from dependency to emotional self-reliance, and diagnostic patterns that allowed the analyst to disconnect and recognize the case specific factors that diverged from, or agreed with, regular development. (Anna Freud: (http://www.crystalinks.com)

In her book 'Normality and Pathology in Childhood' she condensed information from work at the Hampstead Clinic and noting at the Well Baby Clinic, the Nursery School and Nursery School for Blind Children, the Mother and Toddler Group and the War Nurseries. In child analyses Anna sensed that it was more than all transference symptoms that offered the 'royal road to the unconscious' (Anna Freud: (http://www.crystalinks.com) One of the major issues was with regard to communications among therapists, that is, while adult problems were communicated through traditional labels, children's difficulties that could not be. As children's difficulties are more instantaneous, she formulated them in terms of the child's movement along a time-frame. A child synchronized with most of his or her peers in terms of eating behaviors, personal cleanliness, play methods, relationships with other children, and others that could be deemed fit. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)

When one feature or another of a child's development critically lagged behind the rest, the clinician could believe that there was a difficult situation, and could correspond the problem by explaining the specific lag. She regulated the records for children with diagnostic profiles, supported the pooling of remarks from multiple analysts, and promoted continuing studies of development from early childhood through adolescence. She also directed the method of using normal trials, that is, careful analyses of groups of children who went through comparable disabilities, such as blindness, or initial traumas, such as loss of parents during wartime. The widespread evaluation of Freudian psychology as having no practical basis is true only if empirical basis is limited to laboratory experimentation. Most of Anna Freud's work is enclosed within 'The Writings of Anna Freud' which is a seven-volume collection of her books and papers, including 'The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense' and her work on the analysis of children and adolescents. She is a very good writer, does not get too scientific in most of her works, and uses many appealing case studies as illustrations. (Anna Freud: 1895-1982- (www.ship.edu/)

Conclusion:

To conclude, Anna Freud followed her father in entering the career of psychoanalysis. She stayed dedicated to her father all through her lifetime and had a close relationship. She became a leader in child psychoanalysis, even though her father Sigmund Freud was an authority on adult psychoanalysis because of the motivation he passed on in her career, and extended the legacy of her father by applying psychoanalytic findings to realistic problems of child care and development. Nevertheless it should also be noted that even though her father had supported and had influenced her towards the field of psychoanalysis, she had her own thoughts and went on to show it as we could realize where she disproved her father's 'Little Hans' analysis, even though she pursued most of his theories. Lastly, Anna Freud dedicated most of her efforts to the analysis of children and adolescents and on making that analysis better......

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