Women in Psychology: Anna Freud

Sigmund Freud is not the only Freud to have contributed to the field of psychology. Many people know about Sigmund's contributions to the understanding of the unconscious mind but do not know of his contribution to child psychology, his youngest daughter Anna Freud.

Anna Freud was born on December 3, 1895 the youngest of six children to Sigmund and Martha Freud (Wikipedia, 2007). She was considered the "black sheep" of the family since she had difficulty relating to her siblings and had a strained relationship with her mother Martha. Anna not only had problems with her brothers, sisters and mother, but she had problems in school as well. She did not like school because she felt she did not learn anything. Anna felt that she learned more from her father and his visitors to their home than she did from any classroom. Being around these different people helped her to learn Hebrew, German, English, French, and Italian (Women's Intellectual Contributions, 2007). By the time Anna was fifteen, she was reading her father's works which helped her gain interest into the field of psychology. Around this time, Anna began telling her father about her dreams which eventually wound up in his book Interpretation of Dreams (Wikipedia, 2007). This was to be the first time that Anna became an intimate part of her father's works.