ABSTRACT
In the history of psychoanalysis to date, Anna Freud is often presented with ambivalence, and criticism is leveled as much at her person as at her theory. In France in particular, her ideas are associated with a psychoanalytic ego psychology and often despised as a kind of formed defense of the Freudian revolution. The path that brings the daughter of the creator of psychoanalysis to take an interest in adolescence rests on a set of circumstances, mixing personal life, institutional stakes and the ongoing theorisation of adolescence. The Hietzing School was a psycho-pedagogical experiment which attested to the shared hope, among pedagogues and psychoanalysts alike, that one could think about children’s education in a new way. In 1923, Anna Freud convened select the Viennese analysts for an informal “Children’s Seminar” aimed at training therapists to apply psychoanalytic principle to education.
