The partnership between the Early Intervention Institute,St Petersburg,and the Anna Freud Centre,London

The authors describe study and teaching links between the Early Intervention Institute in St Petersburg and the Anna Freud Clinic in London. Some brief clinical examples from a variety of settings are given as well as a longer case presentation. The impact of widespread institutional care, alcoholism and terrible housing conditions on child mental health are illustrated. This raises questions about the role of child psychotherapy when social conditions are so harsh. The case material indicates that, despite this, children can be helped in some measure to feel more secure, by the therapist providing constancy and reliability within an often frightening and dangerous external world.     

Working With Fathers in Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy edited by Tessa Baradon,Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2019, 191 pp.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Melanie Klein and Anna Freud: The discourse of the early dispute

Divisions in the field of the psychoanalysis of children can be traced to a dispute over the infantile super-ego between the theorists Melanie Klein and Anna Freud beginning in 1927. These divisions are understood within the analytic world as the result of scientific disputation between alternative valid theories. An examination of the language, claims, and epistemology of Klein's and Freud's publications in 1927 that marked the public commencement of the conflict, reveals a personalized discourse in which authority was derived from the allegiance, experience, and personal analytic standing of the contestants as much as from theoretical insight. The structure and rhetoric of the debate suggest that, rather than terminating the dispute, the publications of 1927 served to encourage professionalization in child analysis and establish Anna Freud and Melanie Klein as authoritative alternative theorists.     

Between practice and theory: Melanie Klein,Anna Freud and the development of child analysis

An examination of the early history of child analysis in the writings of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud reveals how two different and opposing approaches to child analysis arose at the same time. The two methods of child analysis are rooted in a differential emphasis on psychoanalytic theory and practice. The Kleinian method derives from the application of technique while the Anna Freudian method is driven by theory. Furthermore, by holding to the Freudian theory of child development Anna Freud was forced to limit the scope of child analysis, while Klein's application of Freudian practice has led to new discoveries about the development of the infant psyche.     

The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child,Volume VI Edited by Ruth S. Eissler,Anna Freud,Heinz Hartmann,Ernst Kris

Abstract

The effect of affective group bibliotherapy (GB) was compared to affective group therapy (GT) on patients’ functioning in therapy and their session impression. Three small groups totaling twenty–five in–patients in a hospital in Israel participated in the study. Clients concurrently participated in both group types, undergoing three sessions in each condition. In–therapy behaviors were assessed through the Client Behavior System (CBS; Hill &; O’Brien, 1999). Results indicated that in the GB condition compared to the GT condition, clients showed less resistance, used simple responses less frequently, and expressed greater affective exploration. The Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ; Stiles et al., 1994) was used to measure clients’ impressions of the sessions. Results indicated that patients evaluated the two treatment conditions equally. Overall, the results support earlier findings, suggesting that affective bibliotherapy can be an effective method of treatment.     

Anna Freud and Observation: Memoirs of Her Colleagues from the Hampstead War Nurseries

ABSTRACT

Initially, Anna Freud did not wish to carry out systematic observations; rather, she wanted to be in the field while maintaining an analytical attitude with a free-floating attention. Based on memories of her employees Manna Friedmann, Anneliese Schnurman, Hansi Kennedy, and Joyce Robertson, this article discusses the way in which Anna Freud taught them to observe the children. She also observed those very colleagues who were observing, in order to be able to convey to them, a psychoanalytic view of the children.     

The role of identification in the resolution of trauma: the Anna Freud memorial lecture

In studies on the consequences of trauma, identifications have too often been overlooked. Trauma is experienced as an assault and can lead to an automatic, unconscious identification with the aggressor. Trauma is associated with a constellation of identifications, including identification with the aggressor, with the victim, with the rescuer, and with the caregiver. Identifications are important for the recovery from and mastery of trauma.     

The Nature of the Transference Between Anna Freud and Melanie Kleins: Learning from the Controversies

As we work through our theories, we rejoice in discovering the logic of concepts and their articulation in clinical experience. Such joy hides other movements, in which the only stakes are demands for love, sexual curiosity and the satisfaction of hate, transferred from infancy to others worlds, idealised or despised. When we participate in our psychoanalytical institutions, we feel pride or even vanity to be participating in the great historical movement of psychoanalysis. This conceals the working of transference in our institutional life; transference which is crudely sexual at its origins, and implies maternal, paternal or fraternal objects. This is its constraining power. We should be fully aware of this, as Strachey or Balint have already shown, in order to attenuate the violence of transference and stimulate our creativity. Anna Freud and Melanie Klein's controversies had a reality of their own. This reality was quickly forgotten and trapped in various conflicts, as those existing between Jones and Freud or between Glover and the rest of the British Psychoanalytical Society of his times. These re-elaborations gave rise to ideological elements, which have ever since pervaded the history of psychoanalytical theory, influencing psychoanalytical methods and clinics. It is important for us today to elucidate these ideologies in order to improve our achievements.