ABSTRACT
The Hampstead Index Project itself and the concepts studied in it are embedded in a specific psychoanalytic field; therefore a few lines of development in the theoretical and institutional context surrounding the inception of the project are first sketched. Although not originally conceived with the intention of doing conceptual research, the Hampstead Index Project has become the first systematic attempt to clarify the development and use of central psychoanalytic concepts in a research context. The Hampstead War Nurseries, founded in London by Anna Freud during the Second World War, were the precursor of what was to become, in the early 1950s, the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic and is today the Anna Freud Centre. From early 1950s onwards, Anna Freud and her collaborators at the clinic began a research project, which became known as Hampstead Index. The Hampstead Clinic treated children from the age of 2 years who suffer from various psychopathological conditions ranging from neurotic developmental disorders to psychotic illnesses.
