Anna Freud: Biography And Work Of Sigmund Freud’s Successor
When talking about psychoanalysis, it is almost inevitable to think specifically about 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 that Freud founded, already had many other representatives since the beginning of the 20th century 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 his life, his work and his most relevant theories.
Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung are two such examples. They were exceptional thinkers who soon moved away from their mentor’s proposals and came to found different currents within psychodynamics (individual psychology and depth psychology, respectively).
However, some of Sigmund Freud’s successors claimed the works of their teacher and worked embracing most of his approaches, to expand and qualify the ideas related to “classical” psychoanalysis. Anna Freud the daughter of Sigmund Freud, was one of these people.
The early years of Anna Freud
Anna Freud was born in Vienna in 1895, and She was the last daughter of the marriage between Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays At that stage his father was devising the theoretical foundations of psychoanalysis, so from a very young age he came into contact with the world of psychodynamics. In fact, during the course of the First World War he often attended meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Circle. Shortly after, between 1918 and 1920, he began psychoanalyzing with his father.
It is at this time that Anna Freud stops working as a governess and decides to dedicate herself to psychoanalysis. Specifically she **, she dedicated herself to psychoanalysis with boys and girls **. Between 1925 and 1930, Anna Freud began giving seminars and conferences to train psychoanalysts and educators, convinced that the psychoanalytic practice and theory created by her father could be very important during the first years of people’s lives, which is when Social norms are internalized and determining traumas can remain fixed. She also publishes her book Introduction to Psychoanalysis for Educators.
It is also at this time that one of the most relevant train wrecks of the first years of psychoanalysis arises: the theoretical battle fought between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein , another of the few European women psychoanalysts at the beginning of the century. Both held completely opposite ideas in many aspects related to the evolution of the psyche with age and the procedures that should be followed when dealing with children and adolescents, and both received a lot of media coverage. Anna Freud also received support from her father.
Taking psychoanalysis further
In the 1930s, Anna Freud began to review Freud’s theory on the psychic structures of the id, ego, and superego. Unlike Sigmund Freud, very interested in the id, the unconscious and the hidden and mysterious mechanisms that according to him govern behavior, Anna Freud was much more pragmatic and preferred to focus on what makes us adapt to real contexts and everyday situations
These types of motivations made her focus her studies on the self, which according to Sigmund Freud and herself is the structure of the psyche directly connected to the environment, reality. In other words, if Sigmund Freud proposed explanations about how the ego and the superego had the role of preventing the id from imposing its interests, Anna Freud understood the ego as the most important thing in the psyche, being the part that acts as an arbiter. between the superego and the id. From this approach arose shortly afterwards the so-called ego psychology, whose most important representatives were Erik Erikson and Heinz Hartmann.
But let’s go back to Anna Freud and her ideas about the self.
Anna Freud, the ego and defense mechanisms
In the mid-1930s, Anna Freud published one of her most important books: The Ego and Defense Mechanisms.
In this work he attempted to describe in more detail the functioning of the ego structures that his father had spoken of years before: the ego, the id and the superego. He itAccording to these ideas, It is governed by the pleasure principle and seeks immediate satisfaction of its needs and drives Meanwhile he superegoassesses whether we are getting closer or further away from an ideal image of ourselves who only acts nobly and conforms perfectly to social norms, while the I It is between the other two and tries to ensure that the conflict between them does not harm us.
Anna Freud highlights the importance of the ego as an escape valve that ensures that the tension accumulated by an id that must be constantly repressed does not put us in danger. The ego, which is the only one of the three psychic structures that has a realistic view of things, tries to entertain the id so that its demands are delayed until the moment in which satisfying them does not put us at risk, at the same time that negotiates 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 id and offer it small symbolic victories, since it cannot satisfy its needs in the real world. So, The defense mechanism of denial consists of 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 whom we can “get even”, while rationalization consists of replacing an explanation about what has happened with another that makes us feel better (you can see more defense mechanisms in this article).
Anna Freud did not stand out for being especially groundbreaking, quite the opposite: accepted the bulk of Sigmund Freud’s ideas and expanded them regarding the functioning of the id, the ego and the superego.
However, his explanations served to give a more pragmatic and not so dark approach to psychoanalysis. Whether his clinical and educational approaches are really useful or not is an entirely different issue.
