Anna Freud
Anna Freud was born in Vienna in 1895 to the famous Sigmund Freud. She followed her father's footsteps and studied psychology and psychoanalysis. She and Melanie Klein are considered to be the founders of psychoanalytic child psychology. Anna Freud was highly interested in the Latency stage (6- puberty) of her father's psychosexual development. Therefore, she mostly worked with children who are approaching puberty or those already in puberty.
Personal Life
Anna Freud had a very rough childhood. She constantly competed with her siblings for attention and didn't feel like she belonged in her family. Her father however was very fond of her; she was featured in her father's diary more than her other family members.
Anna's workAnna Freud's work was a continuation of her father's work, but still her own. She studied children and found that their psychological thinking was different than what her father found in adults.
She found that symptoms that were shown in childhood often can be found as personality disorders in adults and also emphasized the importance of parents and rules in the development of children. What was the significance of her contributions?
Her studies in her father's psychoanalysis and her works and application of it to child psychology helped develop child psychology and child study along with G. Stanley Hall.
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