ABSTRACT
Anna Freud considered the principal task facing child analysts to be the extension of psychoanalytic child psychology through the more detailed study of developmental processes, anomalies, and disturbances. She firmly believed that child analysts were in a unique position to undertake this task and that, through both treatment and psychoanalytically informed observation of children they could significantly clarify and extend knowledge of early development. In the psychoanalytic literature there are two major conceptual approaches to a definition of physical pain. One is to define pain as a more or less localized sensation, and the other is to conceptualize pain as an affect because, in addition to being a sensation, the experience of pain connotes emotional and ideational components. Anna Freud's systematic attempt to distinguish between developmental psychopathology and conflictual pathology of a neurotic kind led her to describe the increasing complexity of the interrelationship between the two types of pathology during the child's early years.
