ABSTRACT
Anna Freud’s clinical genius had at root the simple imperative to know how children think, feel, and see the world. This demands what has now come to be called “empathic attune-ment”, but Anna Freud did not see this as a special technical stance, requiring a different theory. Rather it was a central postulate of psychoanalysis with its assumption of the reality of intrapsychic life. During the Sixties and Seventies Anna Freud was at the centre of psychoanalytic history and development. Ten years after her death in 1982, for the George Klein Lecture in San Francisco, people gave a “Reminiscence of Anna Freud”. In 1918, Freud presented a challenge to his psychoanalytic colleagues—to open institutions or outpatient clinics where treatment would be free. The small group of psychoanalysts rose to the challenge and, during the inter-war years, a dozen or so free clinics were opened in seven countries and ten cities from London to Zagreb.
