Anna Freud: biography and work of Sigmund Freud’s successor

Sigmund's daughter was one of the main references of the psychodynamic current.

When talking about psychoanalysis, it is almost inevitable to think specifically of Sigmund Freud, a historical figure who, beyond being the beginning of a current of thought, has become one of the most popular and recognizable icons.

However, the psychodynamic current, which is the branch of non-scientific psychology founded by Freud, had already since the early twentieth century many other representatives who defended a vision of the psyche significantly different from that of the father of psychoanalysis. For example, this is the case of Anna Freud. Today we explain her life, her work and her most relevant theories.

Psychoanalysis: Freud, Jung and Adler

Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung are two such examples. They were exceptional thinkers who soon moved away from their mentor's proposals and went on to found different currents within psychodynamics (individual psychology and depth psychology, respectively).

However, some of Sigmund Freud's successors claimed the works of their master and worked embracing most of his approaches, in order to expand and qualify the ideas related to "classical" psychoanalysis. Anna FreudSigmund Freud's daughter, Anna Freud, was one such person.

Anna Freud's early years

Anna Freud was born in Vienna in 1895, and was the last child of the marriage was the last child of the marriage between Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays.. At that time her father was devising the theoretical foundations of psychoanalysis, so from an early age she came into contact with the world of psychodynamics. In fact, during the course of the First World War he used to attend the meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Circle. Shortly afterwards, between 1918 and 1920, she began to psychoanalyze with her father.

It was at this time that Anna Freud stopped working as a governess and decided to devote herself to psychoanalysis. Specifically**, she dedicated herself to psychoanalysis with children**. Between 1925 and 1930, Anna Freud began to give seminars and lectures to train psychoanalysts and educators, convinced that the psychoanalytic practice and theory created by her father could be of great importance during the first years of life, when social norms are internalized and determining traumas can be fixed. She also published her book Introduction to Psychoanalysis for Educators.

It is also at this time that one of the most relevant train wrecks of the early years of psychoanalysis took place: the theoretical battle between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Melanie Kleinanother of the few European women psychoanalysts at the beginning of the century. Both held totally opposite ideas in many aspects related to the evolution of the psyche with age and the procedures to be followed in dealing with children and adolescents, and both received a lot of media coverage. Anna Freud, moreover, was supported by her father.

Taking psychoanalysis further

In the 1930s, Anna Freud began to revise the Freudian theory of the psychic structures of the ego, the ego and the superego. In contrast to Sigmund Freud, who was very interested in the Ego, the unconscious and the hidden and mysterious mechanisms that, according to him, govern behavior, Anna Freud began to revise Freud's theory on the psychic structures of the Ego, the ego and the superego, Anna Freud was much more pragmatic and preferred to focus on what makes us adapt to real contexts and everyday situations..

This type of motivation led her to focus her studies on the self, which according to Sigmund Freud and herself is the structure of the psyche directly connected to the environment, to reality. In other words, if Sigmund Freud proposed explanations on how the ego and the superego had the role of preventing the ego from imposing its interests, Anna Freud understood the ego as the most important part of the psyche, being the part that acts as an arbiter between the superego and the ego. From this approach arose shortly after the so-called psychology of the self, whose most important representatives were Erik Erikson and Heinz Hartmann.

But let us return to Anna Freud and her ideas about the ego.

Anna Freud, the ego and defense mechanisms

In the mid-1930s, Anna Freud published one of her most important books: The Ego and the Defense Mechanisms.

In this work she tried to describe in a more detailed way the functioning of the ego structures that her father had spoken about years before: the ego, the ego and the superego. The itaccording to these ideas, is governed by the pleasure principle and seeks the immediate satisfaction of its needs and drives, while the ego, according to these ideas, is governed by the pleasure principle and seeks the immediate satisfaction of its needs and drives.while the superego values whether we are approaching or moving away from an ideal image of ourselves, which only acts nobly and conforms which only acts nobly and conforms perfectly to social norms, whereas the ego is between the other two and tries to ensure that the conflict between them does not harm us.

Anna Freud emphasizes the importance of the ego as an escape valve that prevents the tension accumulated by an ego that has to be constantly repressed from endangering us. The ego, which is the only one of the three psychic structures that has a realistic view of things, tries to entertain the ego so that its demands are delayed until such time as satisfying them does not put us at risk, while negotiating with the superego so that our self-image is not seriously damaged while we do this.

Defense mechanisms are, for Anna Freud, the tricks that the ego uses to deceive the ego and offer it small symbolic victories, since it cannot satisfy its needs in the real world. Thus, the defense mechanism of denial consists in making ourselves believe that the problem that makes us feel bad simply does not exist.The defense mechanism of displacement causes us to redirect an impulse towards a person or object with which we can "get even", while rationalization consists of substituting an explanation for what has happened with another one that makes us feel better (see more defense mechanisms in this article).

Laying the foundations of Freudian theory

Anna Freud was not particularly groundbreaking, quite the contrary: she accepted the bulk of Sigmund Freud's ideas and expanded on them in terms of the functioning of the the functioning of the Ego, the Ego and the Superego.

However, his explanations served to give a more pragmatic and less obscure approach to psychoanalysis. Whether his clinical and educational approaches are really useful or not is another matter entirely.