Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
ANNA FREUD BEING ANALYZED
U'hat follows is the story of Anna Freud's two periods of analysis
with her father,
1918-1922
and
1924-25;
it is a considerably
abridged version of the author's
Anna Freud: A Biography ,
Chapter Three. Footnotes have not been included with this abridged
version; all published texts by Anna Freud referred to here can be
found in
The Writings of Anna Freud,
and those by Sigmund
Freud are in
The Complete Psychological Works of Sig–
mund Freud .
No "process notes" for Anna Freud's analysis exist , and
Sigmund Freud did not devote an individual case history to her. The
main document for considering the course of her psychoanalysis is
one she wrote herself: "Beating Fantasies and Daydreams." Late in
her life, when she became concerned about the inquiries of prospec–
tive biographers, Anna Freud several times protected her privacy by
declaring that the clinical material for "Beating Fantasies and
Daydreams" came from her own analytic practice . But the paper ac–
tually was written some six months before Anna Freud saw her first
patient, and the occasion for it was her desire to attend the
September 1922 International Congress in Berlin as a member of a
psychoanalytic society. She wrote to Max Eitingon , head of the
Berlin Society, in April, 1922, to ask his advice:
If
it were possible, I would like very much to become a member
of a psychoanalytic association before this year's Congress . This
would be hard to do in Vienna, and I would fail anyway because
I have not yet done enough to give a lecture. But, just recently
my translation of the Varendonck book has appeared , and this is
a work for psychoanalysis, if only a minor one. Would the Berlin
Society accept me on the basis of this work?
Their decision clearly was that she should prepare a lecture for
Editor's Note: Copyright
C
1988 by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. From
Anna Freud: A
Biography
to be published in October by Summit Books.
