Anna's Bedroom

This and the next room belong to the second mezzanine apartment, which was only acquired in 1906. The rooms not used for Freud’s practice were occupied by the family. In 1921, Anna took up residence in the two rooms.

Previously, Freud’s sister Rosa Graf and her family had lived in this apartment. In a letter to Sándor Ferenczi dating from 1920, Freud referred to these two rooms as “the boys’ rooms”: Martin, the eldest son, was given the smaller room; his brothers Oliver and Ernst shared the larger adjacent room. Aunt Minna presumably also spent time here during the day, at least in one of the two rooms, while Martin, Oliver, and Ernst were serving in the military. Finally, after the three sons moved out, the former “boys’ rooms” were given to Anna, the youngest daughter. In early 1921, Anna Freud set up her bedroom in the smaller room.

Anna writes to her brother Ernst that this room now contains “all light-toned furniture”: the “vanity on the long wall relocated between the two closets,” “the bed on the opposite side in the window nook.” The “vanity” — in Vienna also referred to as a Psyche — which now also stands against the side wall of this room, is the “full-length mirror” that finds mention in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle in connection with his grandson Ernstl’s so-called Fort-Da game.

There is a film of this room in which the bed is visible and next to it, a telephone.

Uncovered intercom cable. There was an internal line to Anna Freud’s friend Dorothy Burlingham, who lived on the second floor.

Dorothy Burlingham (1891–1979), daughter of the glass artist and jeweler Louis Comfort Tiffany, moved to Vienna from New York in 1925. She lived in this building as of 1929 and also became a psychoanalyst. There were two phones: one here in the bedroom and one (which was probably the base station) in the dining room. After the first raid by the SA on March 15, 1938, the housekeeper Paula Fichtl was asked to inform Dorothy if danger were to arise again. On March 22, 1938, following a visit by the Gestapo and the arrest of Anna Freud, Burlingham called the American Embassy.

Anna Freud & Dorothy Burlingham

Together – Before and After the War

Anna Freud starts her (training) analysis with her father after 1918. Such a close relationship between analyst and patient is unthinkable today, but at the time it was not unusual. C. G. Jung, Karl Abraham, and Melanie Klein also analyzed their own children.

Anna Freud, who enjoyed needlework all her life, takes a course at a carpet and tapestry weaving school in 1923. In 1925, she meets the American Dorothy Burlingham who is seeking psychoanalytical treatment for her son Bob, an asthma patient. When Anna agrees to undertake Bob’s analysis, Dorothy and her four children move to Vienna.

Initially in analysis with Theodor Reik, Dorothy Burlingham becomes Sigmund Freud’s patient in 1927. In 1929, she moves into the apartment two floors above the Freud family. The two women form a close relationship. They would work and live together until their death.

In 1931, the two women purchase an old farmhouse in Hochrotherd in the Vienna Woods which they fill with colorful rustic furniture. After the Freuds’ emigration into London exile, these furnishings find a new home in a weekend house in Walberswick on the east coast of England. After the end of the war, Anna Freud tries to annul the sale of the estate in Hochrotherd, which had been sold below value in 1938, its proceeds going to the German ‘Reich’, but without success.

Anna Freud doesn’t return to Vienna until 1971, when she travels there on the occasion of the 27th Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), visiting the recently opened memorial exhibition in rooms of her father’s former practice. At the Congress, she presents her plan to establish a library at Berggasse 19, asking her IPA colleagues for book donations.

London

What children need in times of war

In response to the air raids (the “Blitz”) on London in 1940, Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham established wartime children’s homes, the Hampstead War Nurseries. These nurseries provided a safe environment for children who had lost their homes or parents, or whose mothers had to bring them into air-raid shelters every night for protection, ensuring they were cared for and shielded from the impact of war as much as possible. In total, three war nurseries were opened in 1941: two in the London district of Hampstead and another in Essex.

These facilities also served as institutes for child psychoanalysis, with research findings regularly published. Freud and Burlingham observed, among other things, that the breakdown of family cohesion affected children more severely than the war itself. Unlike other children’s homes, the Hampstead War Nurseries placed special emphasis on maintaining regular visits from mothers and fostering sibling bonds.

Blind children and twins from a psychoanalytic perspective

Dorothy Burlingham’s research focused on blind children and twins, subjects that had previously been largely overlooked in psychoanalytic literature. While still in Vienna, she observed and analyzed students at the Israelitisches Blinden-Institut on the Hohe Warte. She soon recognized that the unconscious perceptions of blind children were primarily based on misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the external world and could only be accessed “indirectly, via their conscious awareness” (Burlingham, 1914).

In her 1950 monograph Twins, she examined the relationship between identical twins and their inner worlds. Her findings were informed by observations from the Hampstead War Nurseries. Among the 191 children in the war nurseries, there were six sets of twins, including four sets of identical twins. She observed three of these pairs over an extended period: Bert and Bill, Madge and Mary, and Bessie and Jessie, who were admitted in July 1941, when they were not yet four months old.

Anna's Treatment Room

Starting in early 1921, Anna Freud used this larger room as her study, and in 1923, she also opened her psychoanalytic practice here.

During the mid-1920s, Anna Freud regularly invited colleagues to Saturday eve ning gatherings to discuss psychoanalytic, educational, and social issues.

Anna Freud treated both children and adults in her practice. Her published lectures reveal that the furnishings of the room were sometimes integrated into the analytic process — for example, a patterned carpet or a table under which a ten-year-old patient regularly took refuge. As in Freud’s practice, there was also a tiled stove beside the couch in this room, which has survived the decades at Berggasse. Additionally, there were two bookshelves and an extra bookcase designed by Felix Augenfeld, as well as a Japanese storage cabinet, and a seating area with handmade blankets. On her desk, as on the desk of her father, stood a small collection of antiques; above the couch hung a portrait of her father — currently, the same spot is occupied by an etching by Ferdinand Schmutzer.

Anna Freud’s correspondence with Lou Andreas-Salomé reveals that her German Shepherd, Wolf, was present during analytic sessions. (Sigmund Freud, who acquired dogs starting in 1928, also allowed their presence during his psychoanalytic sessions — perhaps following his daughter’s example.)

As is visible in the remnants of the molding, the wallpaper did not extend to the ceiling but is in the same shade of red as in Sigmund Freud’s consultation room. On the ceiling there are remnants of a mural dating to the time of the building’s construction and remnants of a twentieth-century painting applied atop it.

As is visible in the remnants of the molding, the wallpaper did not extend to the ceiling, but is in the same shade of red as in Sigmund Freud’s consultation room. On the ceiling there are remnants of a mural dating from the time of the building’s construction as well as the remnants of a later painting from the twentieth-century painting applied on top of the earlier work.

Hietzing School and Jackson Nursery

Psychoanalytic Pedagogy and Project-Based Learning

In search of the best educational approach for her four children, Dorothy Burlingham founded a private school in 1927 in the home of Eva Rosenfeld in the Viennese district of Hietzing. Rosenfeld, who entered analysis with Sigmund Freud in 1929 and later became a psychoanalyst herself, was also one of Anna Freud’s close friends.

Between 1927 and 1933, approximately 20 students aged eight to fifteen were taught there, with teachers including August Aichhorn, Peter Blos, and Erik Homburger (Erikson). Although Anna Freud held no official position, former students described her as “omnipresent.” Instead of traditional teacher-centered instruction, alternative methods such as project-based learning were used. The “Arctic Project,” for example, spanned all subjects and culminated in the production of a Christmas newspaper. To avoid encouraging competition, the school did not assign grades. Notably, one former student described their time there as “a prolonged vacation.”

Daycare for the youngest

With financial support from Dorothy Burlingham and the American physician, Edith Jackson, Anna Freud founded an institution for the youngest children in 1937: the Jackson Nursery, which was housed in a Montessori kindergarten building at Rudolfsplatz in Vienna’s 1st district. The educational methods used in the nursery were also strongly influenced by Maria Montessori’s theories.

Anna Freud placed great emphasis on admitting children from socially disadvantaged families. She also used her interactions with the children to test and refine her own theories on child development in practice. Psychoanalytically trained caregivers ensured that the children could behave as freely and naturally as possible — so much so that nursery records affectionately referred to the space as the “monkey cage.”

The National Socialists (Nazis), who were hostile to both Montessori methods and psychoanalysis, disparagingly referred to the nursery as an “American philanthropic project.”

Early Writings

Pioneering work in the field of child analysis

In 1922, Anna Freud was admitted to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (WPV) with her paper, "Beating Fantasies and Daydreams". She soon began working with both adults and children, aged six to twelve. Since young patients were always sent by their parents, she placed particular emphasis on longer introductory phases to build trust, in order to "transform the decision to undergo analysis from an external one into an internal one" (Anna Freud, 1927).

At Berggasse 19, she frequently met with psychoanalysts and educators August Aichhorn, Siegfried Bernfeld, and Willi Hoffer on Saturday evenings as part of a working group. Their discussions addressed pedagogical questions, Melanie Klein’s theories, and their own techniques in child psychoanalysis. Unlike Klein, Anna Freud did not believe that play could replace free association.

Later, she collaborated with Aichhorn, Bernfeld, and Hoffer on the editorial board of the Journal for Psychoanalytic Pedagogy, where, in 1931, she became one of the editors.

A new focus: the ego functions

Anna Freud’s books Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis (1927) and Introduction to Psychoanalysis for Educators (1930) are based on lectures and presentations. In 1936, she published her first major independent theoretical work: The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. In it, she shifted her focus to the ego—a move that some of her colleagues considered revolutionary.

The book, structured into twelve chapters, provides an overview of the technical and theoretical developments of the time, as well as a catalog and description of all known defense mechanisms. Anna Freud classified these mechanisms according to the three sources of anxiety that her father had already described in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926): realistic anxiety, neurotic anxiety (instinctual fear), and moral anxiety (superego anxiety). Through numerous case studies, she illustrated how different types of anxiety correspond to specific defense mechanisms. This work also marked the first detailed explanation of the defense mechanism of “identification with the aggressor.”