Freud, Anna

The Early Years in Vienna

The youngest of six children, Anna Freud was born to Sigmund and Martha Bernays Freud on December 3, [Page 484]1895, in Vienna, Austria. By all accounts, Anna was very close to her father, having been born during the period when he was undergoing the vigorous self-analysis that ultimately led to some of his most important work. She sometimes said that she and psychoanalysis were born in the same year: 1895 was the publication date of Freud and Breuer's Studies on Hysteria, often identified as the first publication in psychoanalysis.

Young “Annerl” was a precocious and somewhat mischievous child (Young-Bruehl, 1988). Despite early school anxieties, she excelled in her studies and initially intended to become an elementary school teacher. Upon graduation from secondary school, she obtained a 4-year contract for a teaching position with her former school, the Cottage Lyceum in Vienna. Although Anna discontinued her teaching career to become a psychoanalyst at the age of 24, her early teaching experiences provided her with opportunities to observe the normal development of relatively healthy children and probably gave direction to her later psychoanalytic research.

In 1919, Anna accepted a position as an assistant in the English department of the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag (International Psychoanalytic Publishing House) of Vienna and intensified her psychoanalytic training. She did not continue her formal education beyond secondary school, but her informal qualifications as a lay psychoanalyst were extensive. Her interest in psychoanalysis began early. Eager to accompany and emulate her father, she avidly studied the psychoanalytic literature and attended the Wednesday evening meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society from the age of 14.

Anna was undoubtedly influenced by her father's circle of friends and colleagues, perhaps most notably Lou Andreas-Salomé, Karl Abraham, Hermine Hug Hellmuth, and Sandor Ferenczi (the latter two were early pioneers of child psychoanalysis and laid some of the groundwork for Anna's later contributions). Furthermore, her acquaintance with Ernest Jones and Abraham Brill may have encouraged her interest in learning the English language, which was of decisive benefit in her later career (Dyer, 1983).

Anna Freud's training analysis was performed by her father, with assistance from Lou Andreas Salomé, who acted in a kind of mentoring capacity (Appignanesi & Forrester, 1992). It was not uncommon to analyze relatives at the time, and there were no formal rules to prohibit such arrangements. However, the issue was not without controversy, as indicated by the apparent secrecy surrounding the identity of Anna's training analyst and later suggestions by opponents (e.g., Ernest Jones) to the effect that she was improperly analyzed (Dyer, 1983).

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