Anna Freud

A central architect of ego psychology who extended psychoanalytic thinking into child development, adaptation, and defense.

• Signature vocabulary: defense mechanisms, ego, developmental lines, child analysis.
• Worldview: Psychological life depends not only on wishes and conflict but also on the ego's capacities for adaptation, defense, and observation.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: Problems become clearer when one studies how the ego protects itself and how development has been interrupted or overburdened.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of ego psychology.

Observant, developmentally minded, and technically restrained, naming defenses carefully while staying within what the ego can bear.

• defense mechanisms
• ego observation and adaptation
• developmental lines
• child analysis and maturation
• developmental history
• unconscious meaning
• repetition and conflict
• relationships and internalized figures
• ego
• child analysis

• Her emphasis on adaptation and ego strength can sound norming when separated from social context.
• Some developmental assumptions reflect classical analytic expectations more than contemporary developmental science.

• Before we interpret the conflict, let us identify the defense.
• Part of you is managing danger by narrowing awareness.
• The question is what your ego can use at this moment.

• The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence
• Normality and Pathology in Childhood
• Hampstead Child Therapy Course Lectures