Anna Freud quotes

Anna Freud (1895-1982) was an influential Austrian-British psychoanalyst known for her significant contributions to child psychology and psychoanalysis. She was the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Anna focused her work on understanding and treating child development and defense mechanisms. Her groundbreaking work on play therapy helped shape modern child psychology practices. Alongside her clinical work, Anna wrote extensively on topics such as adolescence, ego psychology, and the impact of war on children. Today, her legacy lives on through the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, a leading charity providing support and mental health services for children, young people, and families. Learn more about Anna Freud's invaluable contributions to the field of psychology and child development.

The horrors of war, pale beside the loss of a mother.

- Anna Freud

In our dreams we can have our eggs cooked exactly how we want them, but we can't eat them.

- Anna Freud

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

- Anna Freud

Create around you at least a small circle where matters are arranged as you want them to be.

- Anna Freud

We are aware only of the empty space in the forest, which only yesterday was filled with trees.

- Anna Freud

We live trapped, between the churned-up and examined past and a future that waits for our work.

- Anna Freud

I am glad that I do not have any children.

- Anna Freud

What I have always wanted for myself is much more primitive. It is probably nothing more than the affection of the people with whom I am in contact, and their good opinion of me.

- Anna Freud

How can one know anything at all about people?

- Anna Freud

My different personalities leave me in peace now.

- Anna Freud

Children usually do not blame themselves for getting lost.

- Anna Freud

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.

- Anna Freud

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

- Anna Freud

We are imprisoned in the realm of life, like a sailor on his tiny boat, on an infinite ocean.

- Anna Freud

Everything becomes so problematic because of basic faults: from a discontent with myself.

- Anna Freud

It is only when parental feelings are ineffective or too ambivalent or when the mother's emotions are temporarily engaged elsewhere that children feel lost.

- Anna Freud

Why do we go around acting as though everything was friendship and reliability when basically everything everywhere is full of sudden hate and ugliness?

- Anna Freud

Who promised you that only for joy were you brought to this earth?

- Anna Freud

If some longing goes unmet, don't be astonished. We call that Life.

- Anna Freud

Sometimes the most beautiful thing is precisely the one that comes unexpectedly and unearned.

- Anna Freud

If I have a stupid day, everything looks wrong to me.

- Anna Freud

A first visit to a madhouse is always a shock.

- Anna Freud

I am no longer afraid to say anything.

- Anna Freud

Papa always makes it clear that he would like to know me as much more rational and lucid than the girls and women he gets to know during his analytic hours.

- Anna Freud

How one can live without being able to judge oneself, criticize what one has accomplished, and still enjoy what one does, is unimaginable to me.

- Anna Freud

Papa continually emphasizes how much remains unexplained. With the other psychoanalytic writers, everything is always so known and fixed.

- Anna Freud

Create around one at least a small circle where matters are arranged as one wants them to be.

- Anna Freud

Everyone here says in a surprised manner that I have grown... they are so stupid and do not notice that I am standing up straighter!

- Anna Freud