Wonder Woman of the Week: Anna Freud
- Jun 8, 2022
- 2 min read
Sigmund Freud is often remembered as the Father of Psychology, but it was his less famous daughter- and this week's Wonder Woman- who made psychology the practice that it is today. Anna Freud was born in 1895 in Austria as the daughter of famed philosopher Sigmund Freud who believed one could learn more about the human psyche through careful analyzation of a person's behavior and through processes. Freud's work laid the foundation for the development of modern psychology, but little Anna must have learned a few things because she took up her father's work and expanded it beyond theories of sexual fantasies and parental points-of-view to develop modern childhood psychology.
Anna Freud's father touched on the idea that childhood experiences could affect their psychology later in life, but Anna Freud tested those concepts and developed her own through careful study of childhood psychology. When Nazi Germany annexed Austria at the dawn of the Second World War, Freud and her family relocated to England for refuge (as Jewish Austrians, the Nazi Germans were eager to have them all executed). As a resident in England, Freud founded Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic (now known as the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families) to further research child psychology and develop meaningful treatments for children in need of psychological help.
Thanks to the work of Anna Freud, groundbreaking research in the field of childhood psychology continues to develop across the world. Freud's work in both Austria and England expanded her father's philosophical field to become a hardened scientific discipline into the human psyche to learn more about how childhood experiences- and particularly trauma- can affect a person later in life as well as meaningful interventions to respond to childhood trauma and provide children the mental health support they need. Childhood psychology continues to be a major field of research today, and it's far from perfect; but the work of Anna Freud made it possible for countless children and adults to received the aid they needed and continue to need as the result of childhood trauma.
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