5. • She attended a private
school, but later said
she learned little at
school. The majority of
her education was from
the teachings of her
father's friends and
associates.
• During WWII she
studied the
development of
homeless children. She
founded her own
course in child
psychoanalysis in 1947
and her own clinic in
1952.
6. • After high school, Anna Freud worked as an
elementary school teacher and began
translating some of her father's works into
German, increasing her interest in child
psychology and psychoanalysis.
• While she was heavily influenced by her
father's work, she was far from living in his
shadow. Her own work expanded upon her
father's ideas, but also created the field of
child psychoanalysis.
7.
8. • Not all the theorists and practioners who followed Freud in the
psychoanalytic tradition felt the need to abandon or overthrow his system.
• There reminded a sizable group of neo-Freudian analyst who adhered to
the central premises of psychoanalysis but nevertheless modified the
system.
• The major change these loyalists introduced was an expansion of the
concept of ego. Rather than being servant of the id, the ego was seen as
having a more extensive role.
• Icluded the ideas-ego was more independent of the id, possesed its own
energy not derived from the id, and had a functions separate from the id.
• Another change introduced was to place less emphasis on biological forces
as influences on personality.
• They also minimized the importance of infantile sexuality and the Oedipus
complex, suggesting thet personality development was determined
primarily by psychological rather than psychosexual forces.
• Thus, social interactions in childhood assumed greater importance than
real or imagined sexual interactions.
9.
10.
11. • But Anna Freud was not primarily a theoretician. Her interests were more
practical, and most of her energies were devoted to the analysis of
children and adolescents, and to improving that analysis. Her father, after
all, had focused entirely on adult patients. Although he wrote a great deal
about development, it was from the perspectives of these adults. What
do you do with the child, for whom family crises and traumas and fixations
are present events, not dim recollections?
• First, the relationship of the child to the therapist is different. The child's
parents are still very much a part of his or her life, a part the therapist
cannot and should not try to usurp. But neither can the therapist pretend
to be just another child rather than an authority figure. Anna Freud found
that the best way to deal with this "transference problem" was the way
that came most naturally: be a caring adult, not a new playmate, not a
substitute parent. Her approach seems authoritarian by the standards of
many modern child therapies, but it might make more sense.
12. • In 1927, Anna published Introduction to the Technique
of Child Analysis, which foretold the direction of her
interests.
• Developed an approach to psychoanalytic theraphy
with children that took into account their relative
immaturity and the level of their verbal skills.
• Her innovations included the use of play materials and
the observation of the child in the home setting. (most
of the observation carried out in London)
• She opened a clinic next door to her father’s house and
there established a treatment center and
psychoanalytic training institute that attracted clinical
psychologist from throughout the world. (The Anna
Freud Centre in London continues her work today).
• Her studies were reported in annual voumes of The
Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. (1945)
13. • Another problem with analyzing children is that their symbolic abilities are not as
advanced as those of adults. The younger ones, certainly, may have trouble relating
their emotional difficulties verbally. Even older children are less likely than adults to
bury their problems under complex symbols. After all, the child's problems are here-
and-now; there hasn't been much time to build up defenses. So the problems are
close to the surface and tend to be expressed in more direct, less symbolic,
behavioral and emotional terms.
• Most of her contributions to the study of personality come out of her work at the
Hamstead Child Therapy Clinic in London, which she helped to set up. Here, she
found that one of the biggest problems was communications among therapists:
Whereas adult problems were communicated by means of traditional labels,
children's problems could not be.
• Because children's problems are more immediate, she reconceptualized them in
terms of the child's movement along a developmental time-line. A child keeping pace
with most of his or her peers in terms of eating behaviors, personal hygiene, play
styles, relationships with other children, and so on, could be considered healthy.
When one aspect or another of a child's development seriously lagged behind the
rest, the clinician could assume that there was a problem, and could communicate
the problem by describing the particular lag.
14.
15.
16. • The term 'defense' in relation to psychology was first used by
Sigmund Freud in 1894. He meant it to describe, as Anna Freud
says, “the ego's struggle against painful or unendurable ideas or
effects” which may lead to neurosis.
• A defense is developed by the ego in order to protect itself against
being overcome by unconscious demands like sex and aggression.
The work of the psychoanalyst is to get a person to bring the
instinctual urges into consciousness, which may involve isolating
the original pain experienced when they were confronted by an
impulse that was not satisfied.
• Freud notes that when a person succeeds in creating defense
mechanisms against anxiety and pain, their ego has won the battle
between the 'three institutions' of ego, id and superego.
• When a person has lost an internal battle to unconscious instinct, or
societal 'musts' and 'shoulds', his or her ego has lost. The ego
continually endeavors to create harmony between itself, the
unconscious and the outside world, but this 'harmony' does not
always lead to perfect mental health. In fact, sometimes when the
ego 'wins', a person as a whole may have lost, since the win may
involve the creation of a defense in order to have the ego maintain
its sense of itself at all costs.
17. When people experience difficulties, they have
different ways of handling their pain. These different
ways of dealing with pain are called defense
mechanisms. Originally conceived by Sigmund Freud,
much of the development of defense mechanisms was
done by his daughter, Anna Freud. Defense
mechanisms can be healthy or unhealthy depending on
the circumstances and how much a person uses them.
If you slam down your briefcase because you are mad
at your wife one time, that's not a big deal. But if you
frequently take your anger out by throwing or breaking
things, there might be a better way of dealing with your
anger
18. Name of Defense
Mechanism
Description Example
Repression
Burying a painful feeling or thought from your awareness
though it may resurface in symbolic form. Sometimes
considered a basis of other defense mechanisms.
You can't remember your father's funeral.
Denial Not accepting reality because it is too painful.
You are arrested for drunk driving several times but don't believe you
have a problem with alcohol.
Regression
Reverting to an older, less mature way of handling stresses
and feelings
You and your roommate have get into an argument so you stomp off
into another room and pout
Projection
Attributing your own unacceptable thoughts or feelings to
someone or something else
You get really mad at your husband but scream that he's the one mad
at you.
Splitting
Everything in the world is seen as all good or all bad with
nothing in between.
You think your best friend is absolutely worthless because he forgot a
lunch date with you.
Isolation of affect
Attempting to avoid a painful thought or feeling by
objectifying and emotionally detaching oneself from the
feeling
Acting aloof and indifferent toward someone when you really dislike that
person
Displacement
Channeling a feeling or thought from its actual source to
something or someone else.
When you get mad at your sister, you break your drinking glass by
throwing it against the wall.
Reaction Formation
Adopting beliefs, attitudes, and feelings contrary to what
you really believe
When you say you're not angry when you really are.
Rationalization
Justifying one's behaviors and motivations by substituting
"good", acceptable reasons for these real motivations
I always study hard for tests and I know a lot of people who cheat so it's
not a big deal I cheated this time.
Altruism Handling your own pain by helping others.
After your wife dies, you keep yourself busy by volunteering at your
church.
Humor Focusing on funny aspects of a painful situation.
A person's treatment for cancer makes him lose his hair so he makes
jokes about being bald.
Sublimation
Redirecting unacceptable, instinctual drives into personally
and socially acceptable channels
Intense rage redirected in the form of participation in sports such as
boxing or football
Suppression
The effort to hide and control unacceptable thoughts or
feelings
You are attracted to someone but say that you really don't like the
person at all
Undoing
Trying to reverse or "undo" a thought or feeling by
performing an action that signifies an opposite feeling than
your original thought or feeling
You have feelings of dislike for someone so you buy them a gift
19. • Unlike Jung and Adler, she remained faithful to the basic ideas her father
developed. However, she was more interested in the dynamics of the psyche than
in its structure, and was particularly fascinated by the place of the ego in all this.
Freud had, after all, spent most of his efforts on the id and the unconscious side of
psychic life. As she rightly pointed out, the ego is the "seat of observation" from
which we observe the work of the id and the superego and the unconscious
generally, and deserves study in its own right.
• She is probably best known for her book The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense,
in which she gives a particularly clear description of how the defenses work,
including some special attention to adolescents' use of defenses. The defenses
section of the chapter on Freud in this text is based as much on Anna's work as on
Sigmund's.
• This focus on the ego began a movement in psychoanalytic circles called ego
psychology that today represents, arguably, the majority of Freudians. It takes
Freud's earlier work as a crucial foundation, but extends it into the more ordinary,
practical, day-to-day world of the ego. In this way, Freudian theory can be applied,
not only to psychopathology, but to social and developmental issues as well. Erik
Erikson is the best-known example of an ego psychologist.
20. • She also influenced research in Freudian psychology. She standardized the
records for children with diagnostic profiles, encouraged the pooling of
observations from multiple analysts, and encouraged long-term studies of
development from early childhood through adolescence. She also led the
way in the use of natural experiments, that is, careful analyses of groups
of children who suffered from similar disabilities, such as blindness, or
early traumas, such as wartime loss of parents. The common criticism of
Freudian psychology as having no empirical basis is true only if "empirical
basis" is restricted to laboratory experimentation!
• Most of Anna Freud's work is contained within The Writings of Anna
Freud, 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, doesn't get too
technical in most of her works, and uses many interesting case studies as
examples.
21. • Ego psychology-became primary American form
of psychoanalysis from the 1940s – early 1970s.
• One goal of the neo-Freudians- make
psychoanalysis an accepted part of scientific
psychology.
• In the process, the neo-Freudians fostered a
more conciliatory relationship between
psychoanalysis and academic experimental
psychology.
