Anna freud et sigmund freud biography

A new life in England

Anna Freud was born in Vienna on 3 December 1895. She was the youngest of Sigmund and Martha Freud’s six children.

Anna freud child psychoanalysis theory

Anna came to London from Vienna with her family when they fled Nazi-occupied Vienna in June 1938. Here, Anna made a new life, practiced psychoanalysis and established a high reputation in her own right as a pioneer of child psychoanalysis.

Anna’s parents, Sigmund and Martha Freud, were near the end of their lives when they came to London, and Freud had even been prepared to remain in Austria despite the Nazis.

It was partly to give Anna a new beginning that they uprooted themselves. Like many refugees, Anna threw herself heart and soul into her new life, writing to the American psychoanalyst Clinton McCord: ‘England is indeed a civilised country and I am naturally grateful that we are here.