Anna Freud correspondence

Abstract: This sub-collection consists of handwritten and typed letters, mostly outgoing from Anna Freud to Karl Menninger, Rudolph Ekstein, May D. Lee, and other Menninger Foundation staff. Topics include publishing and requesting reprints, visits (or apologizing for not visiting), professional organizations and conferences, comments and critiques on writings, cards, thank yous for gifts and hospitality, and other related subjects. Anna Freud went to the Menninger Clinic on multiple occasions during the 1960s and later.

Also in the sub-collection are written materials from Anna Freud: article reprints, copies of lectures (sometimes with annotations, though it is unclear who wrote these), and transcripts or notes from speeches, as well as a couple articles about Dr. Freud. Topics include child psychoanalysis and specific discussions within that field, regression, adult analysis, etc.

Summary: These are handwritten and typed letters, mostly outgoing, from Anna Freud to Karl Menninger, Rudolph Ekstein, May D. Lee, and other Menninger Foundation staff. Anna Freud was the youngest child of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Topics include publishing and requesting reprints, visits (or apologizing for not visiting), professional organizations and conferences, comments and critiques on writings, family deaths, and greeting cards. Anna Freud came to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka on multiple occasions during the 1960s. These papers are part of the historic psychiatry material in the Menninger Archives.

Biog. Sketch (Full): Anna Freud was born 3 December 1895 in Vienna, Austria, the youngest child to Sigmund and Martha Freud. She began teaching in the late 1910s and early 1920s, at the same time translating some of her father's psychoanalytic works and undergoing analysis with her father.

By the mid-1920s, Anna had begun establishing her career in the field of psychoanalysis. Due to her father's illness from cancer of the jaw, Anna decided to stay with him to care for him. At the same time, she began seeing clients and patients and became active in professional organizations, particularly the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. It was also during this period that Anna focused her professional attentions on child psychoanalysis, becoming the leader of that field. She began publishing her lectures and other books on the subject. She also became very attached to her friend Dorothy Burlingham and Dorothy's children. Dorothy and Anna continued to be companions throughout the rest of their lives.

The Freuds remained in Vienna throughout the 1930s, despite increasing prosecution and harassment for Jewish people by the Nazis. They finally escaped to England in 1938, where they continued to live. Because of the war and particularly because of the London Blitz, Anna set up the Hampstead War Nurseries for displaced children. These developed in the post-war years as a therapy course and clinic, focused on research, training, and child psychoanalysis.

Beginning in the 1950s, Anna Freud traveled regularly, including in the United States, to lecture and teach. She continued researching, writing, and thinking about child and adolescent psychoanalysis until she died, on 9 October 1982 in London.

After her death, the Hampstead Clinic was renamed the Anna Freud Centre. The Freud house in London became a museum dedicated to the lives and history of the Freud family.

Associated materials: Anna Freud papers, Library of Congress.