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The Work And Contribution Of Anna Freud

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Women have played a very important role in the development of psychology, though they are not recognized as major contributors. In this paper we are going to be focusing on the works and contribution of Anna Freud. She is known for her construction of child psychoanalysis theory and her interpretation of child psychology. Anna Freud (1895-1982) is famous as being involved in the foundation of the child psychoanalytic movement. She was the youngest of Freud’s children and the only one to whose life was devoted to psychoanalysis. Her development of child psychoanalysis has been greatly noted in the history of psychology. Anna Freud kept the basic ideas that her father developed. However, her interest laid in the psyche and how it was constructed. She also took interest in the where the ego stood in the structure of the psyche. She saw the ego as the “seat of observation”; it is from the ego that we can clearly see how the …show more content…

Child analysis is also difficult because their symbolic activities are of a lower standard than adults. Emotional difficulties are extensive in young children; the older children have great problem in disguising their problems with the use of symbols. Thus, they express their feelings more direct as they are closer to the surface in comparison to adults.
She also had a major impact in Freudian psychological research. She is responsible for the standardization of records for children with diagnostic profiles, pushed for the development of children from childhood to adolescence to be studied longitudinal, and encouraged the use of multiple analysts when it comes to observations. Anna Freud also paved the way for natural experiments to be used in the analysis of children who had similar disabilities (e.g. early traumas, blindness,

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