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.”