Women in Psychology Paper
In this assignment I had to choose a woman from the 1850s – 1950s that was important during that time. I will discuss the significant contribution to the field of psychology, background, theoretical perspective, and the contribution of psychology. The person I choose to discuss in this paper that I thought was a significant individual of this field was Anna Freud.
Anna Freud was born December 3, 1895 in Vienna. She was the sixth and the last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Anna appeared to have had an unhappy childhood, which she never made a close or pleasurable relationship with her mother. Anna had problems getting alone with her brothers and ...view middle of the document...
” Most of Anna's education came from her father and his associates. While learning from them she picked up several languages like Hebrew, German, English, French, and Italian (Women Intellectual Contribution). At the age of fifteen she had begun reading her father’s work, which she gained an interest in the field of psychology. Anna had begun developing dreams that she told her father about, and he decided to write a book about it. Sigmund Freud wrote the book Interpretation of Dream, which was about the dreams she was having and Anna became an intimate part of his work (Wikipedia, 2007). Understanding her father’s work gave her a way to communicate with him deeper because he knew she was falling in his footsteps. Many would say that she was her father’s daughter because most of her life was dedicated to her father’s work.
After going to school and not liking, it Anna decided to move to Italy with her grandmother. She move there to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. While staying with her grandmother for two years, she decided to work at an elementary school as a teacher in 1912, after she received her education at the Cottage Lyceum. She also began translating her father’s work into German, which was increasing her interest in studying child psychology and psychoanalysis. In 1918 after she was still dealing with depression her father recommended that he would do psychoanalysis on her (Wikipedia, 2007).
In 1922 the study of her analysis was completed, and she presented an article on “The Relation of a Beating Fantasies to a Daydream” to the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society and became of member of it. In 1923 she began her own psychoanalytical studies with children and two years later, she started teaching at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Training Institute. In 1924 Anna spent most of her time taking care of her father who was suffering from jaw cancer. She also became a member on the executive board of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in which she started working as a training analyst (Women’s Intellectual Contribution 2007). During the time her father was sick Anna started working with adults and adolescents patient while helping translating her father’s work. She did not get a higher degree for the education she was studying, but it led her to be the secretary of the International Psychoanalytical Association where she continued to study child analysis (Wikipedia, 2007).
It may seem that all her work was a translation of father’s work, but Anna had her own theories that developed. Anna noticed that a child symptom was related to the development stages, while her father believed that adult’s symptoms was related to the unconscious mind. Anna was the founder of child psychoanalysis and her study on children developed into a field of its own, which led the techniques of assessments and treatment as significant problems among children (Wikipedia, 2007). In 1935 Anna became the director of the Vienna...
