Robert Coles

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Review of Anna Freud: The Dream of Psychoanalysis

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SOURCE: Review of Anna Freud: The Dream of Psychoanalysis, in The Christian Century, Vol. 109, No. 25, August 26-September 2, 1992, pp. 782-84

[In the following review, Hoch outlines the portrait of Anna Freud that emerges in Coles' biographical study.]

The Radcliff Biographical Series highlights the contributions of women to American life and culture. Robert Coles, professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at Harvard Medical School and author of, among others, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Children of Crisis series, organizes his text around particular aspects of Anna Freud's life: Anna as teacher, theorist, healer, leader, idealist and writer.

He introduces her in the chapter "A Life with Children," alluding to her response to his request to write her biography: "But I don't think I'd be a good subject for a biography—not enough 'action'! You would say all there is to say in a few sentences—she spent her life with children!" Surely, as Coles points out throughout the book, that summary statement is a humble consolidation of years of intensive study, observation and practice in a field that she and her father, Sigmund, and their contemporaries developed into a viable, acceptable science.

Anna's earliest profession was that of teacher, one she claimed to continue and value throughout her life. She noted, "Teaching is not only the presentation of facts and directions about what to do, but an art, the art of exposition and persuasion—whether you can elicit from a student what an analysand of mine once called 'glad assent.'"

Her work on the psychoanalysis of children remains foundational for psychoanalytic theory and practice today. Her development of ego theory, most notably in her monumental work The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense built substantially upon her father's work on the ego complex some 25 years earlier.

On Anna the healer, Coles writes: "Anna Freud … sought to be an ally of those she treated and studied, although an ally who reserved the right to say what had to be said, an ally who would not settle for sugarcoating when bitterness had to be acknowledged in the interest of truth … the healer whose bemused reserve masked a maternal warmth."

By virtue of her relationship to Sigmund as well as her own integrity as an analyst, Anna became the leader of the psychoanalytic movement upon her father's death and shared her leadership with such figures as Grete Bibring, Heinz Hartmann, Karl Menninger and, later, Erik Erikson. They plied their trade and their theories against a backdrop of cynicism, ridicule, religious condemnation and world political chaos. Even so, Anna was keenly aware of the need to forge ahead and did so boldly, but with renowned tact and reserve. Her role as leader ensured her a place as a political and social activist. Bibring remarked about their activism: "Many of us were politically very active…. We wanted to fight for their interests [the poor]. For us psychoanalysis promises personal 'liberation' not for its own sake, but so that we could work to 'liberate' others … to help children grow up in healthier, stronger families, to improve the schools so that children were treated with respect…. I think young people sensed right away that we were on their side!"

Anna's work on The Ego and The Mechanisms of Defense was the paramount revelation of her idealism. Her discussion of projection as the ego's way of handing over aggressive impulses to others is the foundation for her commentary on racial and social tensions: "We find 'theys' and 'thems' to serve our purposes as repositories for everything within ourselves we don't like, have learned to fear, judge wrong or shameful. The worst in us is channeled by this mechanism, which children learn as naturally as they learn to use words." She claimed that as we identify those mechanisms at work through psychoanalysis, we can help create more inclusive and caring attitudes and behaviors around the world.

Finally, Coles documents Anna's work as a writer in references to her many professional papers, letters, books and articles, and by comments upon their enduring usefulness.

Coles's book contains several flaws: First, the flow of the early chapters is muddied frequently by unessential bracketed information. Second, Coles is writing about one of his heroines, and thus his adoration of her—"wide-eyed, openminded … earthy, detached, yet caring and responsive"—is somewhat distracting. Only in the last 50 pages of the book do we get a sense of Anna's humanity—of a woman who admitted helplessness on occasion, who could be critical of herself and others, who had psychological sore spots, and who feuded fiercely with Melanie Klein, the British psychoanalytic leader.

Third, the autobiography reveals little about Anna's childhood, and little about her psychoanalytic experience with her father, her intimacies with women, her failures and fears. It is written as a professional review of an esteemed mentor, and as such is quite exemplary. But it fails to give the reader a full account of this great woman's life. Only in the appendix do we discover some of Anna's achievements.

On the positive side, Coles shares some of Anna's unpublished letters and quotes at length from their interviews, as well as interviews with Heinz and Dora Hartmann. One develops a better sense of Anna from these quoted materials. This book is the foremost text available on Anna Freud, and as such stands as an important resource in the field of psychoanalysis.

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