Freud, Anna | "What dominated our actions then was the spirit of discovery"

Freud, Anna

Autograph manuscript signed, of a lecture on child psychology

21 pages (275 x 215 mm). Written ink on typewriter paper, title “Symposium: Dynamic Psychology and Education" at top and underlined, signed by Freud “Anna Freud” on final page; occasional creases. [With:] Copy of letter to addressee Harry Summerfeld, dated April 10, 1[9]76. In original Air-Mail Express envelope addressed in Freud's hand, and postmarked 10 April 1976.

Manuscript draft of lecture delivered on 20 April 1976 to the American Educational Research Association Symposium.

By 1976, Anna Freud’s career within the field of child psychology and psychoanalysis had established the network of war nurseries. Comprised of eight keynote speakers and attended by over 5,000 individuals, this lecture featured as the opening address to the day-long symposium entitled “Dynamic Psychology and Education: Contributions from a Modern Psychoanalytic Perspective.” At 81 years old, the child psychoanalyst recounts her career and contributions to the field.

The only lecture of Freud's to come to auction according to Rare Book Hub, published only once, in the multi-volume collection of her contributions: Writings of Anna Freud.

Expanding on the work of her father, Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud’s founding of child psychoanalysis redefined the lens through which we understand the motives and development of children. The interwar period profoundly shaped Freud’s entry into child psychology, situating her and her circle of Viennese educators and psychoanalysts within a war-torn Europe struggling to reconstruct itself amongst rising instability that would lead to another international conflict. Shell-shocked soldiers returning from the front, famine, inflation, and rising antisemitism changed society and its behavior, thus affecting the change necessary in addressing its manifestations in adults, but how children absorb and mimic these behaviors. Freud argued that “the educational doctrines from which we departed at that time were one-sided and narrow ones…it needed the experience with undernourished, and badly housed war children on the European continent to convince people that a child’s mind does not function independently of his body.”

Rather than just attending to the needs of the child within the constraints of the classroom, Freud challenged teachers to see children as "products of their family background." Transference, first identified by Sigmund Freud, or the unconscious projection or redirection of feelings from a significant person or relationship of the individuals' past—signified that behaviors at school did not operate in a vacuum. The problematic child in class now alerted to the potentiality of a problematic household. These instances of transference weren't all negative, as Freud witnessed that "phantasies of parental incompetence translated themselves into active pursuit of facts of matured history, with lions, tigers, elephants and other impressive big animals serving as symbols for the parents’ might. Boyish games of fighting, shooting and killing promoted interest in the wars of history. When not forced to draw straight lines or copy prescribed patterns, even the less gifted children became capable painters; when allowed to spin out their own imaginings, some turned into reputable authors."

“Without secretary or typewriter,” Freud sent her handwritten draft to Harry L. Summerfield, Chairman of the Wright Institute, ten days ahead of the Symposium. By the 1950s, Freud was a known figure in American intellectual circles—joining Yale Law School faculty as a visiting scholar and repeat guest lecturer for international Psychoanalytic societies.

REFERENCES

American Educational Research Association: 1977 Annual Meeting April 4–8, New York City: 1977 Annual Meeting April 4–8, New York City. (1976). Educational Researcher, 5(10), R-1-R-4; Peters, Uwe Henrick, Anna Freud: a life dedicated to Children, 236; The British Psychological Society, “Anna Freud – advocate of the child,” 9 November 2022, accessed 23 May 2026