Her father's daughter
Elshtain, Jean Bethke
(one presumes) a bun. But there is more: resolution, fear, concern, relief, eyes that speak of her recent interrogation, a mouth that, determinedly set as it is, nevertheless turns up at the corners...
...She had grown to look like the pictures of her father in his old age - the same blend of sternness and humor, of strength and deep compassion that had not come "naturally" but was, instead, a hard-won achievement...
...As several, spritely, gray-haired women entered the room my expectations rose - was that she...
...The seminar over, Anna Freud headed for the door...
...and created a great clinical institution, the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic...
...There was no mistaking the real Anna Freud when she entered...
...But I think there is more: Anna Freud's rare capacity to identify with the suffering of another without"losing" herself, an ability, with her father, to think rationally even as one cared deeply, to act, therefore, from the gift of devotion rather than out of brittle, forced filiopiety...
...It is remarkable how much influence and authority she has gained among the general run of analysts - many of whom, alas, have derived little from analysis as far as their personal" character is concerned...
...I had journeyed to Hampstead for one of their Wednesday afternoon open seminars, bearing a letter of introduction from a Boston psychoanalyst with whom I was then studying psychoanalytic theory...
...We can all name them...
...It was a masterful performance - an instance of Freudian wit that tweaked yet honored her father...
...I've forgotten the details but I'll never forget the moment when Anna Freud uttered, "Und now she is a happy woman, with a career and family und before she was just a case of (theatrical pause) penis envy...
...For there is no more important work to be done...
...The second image is a personal one...
...What I wish to convey is the texture of that relationship, one that might easily have grown willfully demanding, on the one side, resentfully compliant, on the other...
...Slightly bowed, determined in her bearing, her face remarkable...
...It is surprising, too, how sharp, clear, and unflinching she is in her mastery of the subject...
...I walked up, approached her tentatively, finally handed her the letter...
...Beyond dispute is her vocation as a daughter loyal and true, and her accomplishments as a thinker and activist of the first rank...
...How impossible not to have one's own identity, to be viewed even when one reaches adulthood, as "the son of so and so...
...I had journeyed to Hampstead for one of their Wednesday afternoon open seminars, bearing a letter of introduction from a Boston psychoanalyst with whom I was then studying psychoanalytic theory...
...She walked away, surrounded by friends and colleagues, a slight figure moving somewhat haltingly down the hallway...
...We say: how difficult to be always in the shadow of one's father...
...They all turned out well, and one of them, Anna, was remarkable...
...She served him well and faithfully but without slavishness and in full assurance of her own identity and powers...
...The first is a photograph taken when she was forty-two...
...But one senses that her deepest vocation, that task which gave her life its ultimate texture and form, was as the loyal daughter of a devoted father who was also a very great man...
...No, perhaps that was she...
...The relationship between Anna Freud and her father is lovingly detailed in Max Schur, Freud: Living and Dying...
...She protected his memory...
...All this is true but strangely inadequate...
...Engelman writes that it "was only by the use of her wits and great personal courage that she succeeded in being released...
...She told a wry story about one of her cases, an analysis of an eleven-year-old girl, which she thought had failed only to learn years later all was well...
...After her father's death, Anna Freud, as the keeper of the flame, was firm, determined to honor her father's memory, to protect him from the salacious and the cheap, to share him with the sagacious and respectful, There was, of course, much controversy about whether her hand had grasped the reins too tightly...
...dark eyes, a rather large mouth, the dark hair pulled back into (one presumes) a bun...
...As several, spritely, gray-haired women entered the room my expectations rose - was that she...
...Anna Freud, rest in peace...
...Her seminal work, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, remains a classic in its field - indeed, it inaugurated that field...
...None of this is apt when one turns to Freud's six children...
...We understand why the legacy of the world historic figure to his less than world-historic offspiing is so often sad, occasionally tragic...
...Because she grinned, the audience did also...
...She smiled but her eyes told me more: the parting look she gave me conveyed encouragement and simultaneously issued a warning...
...Anna Freud, rest in peace...
...Two images of Anna Freud capture her for me...
...The children of great men often turn out badly, sometimes very badly indeed...
...It was a masterful performance - an instance of Freudian wit that tweaked yet honored her father...
...Slightly bowed, determined in her bearing, her face remarkable...
...Anna Freud's eyes said: "Someone who wants to do good with my father's work had better mean it, had better be cut out for the task...
...Anna Freud's eyes said: "Someone who wants to do good with my father's work had better mean it, had better be cut out for the task...
...Anna was the last living child of Sigmund Freud, his youngest daughter and his intellectual heir...
...Her gifts of intellect were recognized early and encouraged...
...She smiled but her eyes told me more: the parting look she gave me conveyed encouragement and simultaneously issued a warning...
...She guided several generations of analysts, practitioners, doctors, scholars, lawyers, and students with the clarity of her intellect, the generosity of her impulses, the forcefulness of her personality, the strength of her character...
...What the photograph shows is a woman of striking visage: strong face, broad features framed by deeply set, wide...
...So we "understand" even as we judge, or cluck in disapproval, or murmur satisfaction sotto voce that even the rich and famous have their trials and their glaring flaws...
...I walked up, approached her tentatively, finally handed her the letter...
...She glanced at me, opened it, read it quickly, then said, "I'm always happy to meet someone who wants to do good with my father's work...
...She told a wry story about one of her cases, an analysis of an eleven-year-old girl, which she thought had failed only to learn years later all was well...
...Her father sought his daughter's independence...
...I met Anna Freud, fleetingly, in 1977...
...JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAINAnna Freud HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER THINKER & ACTIVIST OF THE FIRST RANK THERE ARE the obvious things, those musings that form part of our shared stock of received epi' taph and elegy and that bubble up spontaneously when a great man or woman whose life was our last link to another great one, or an era, or an event, dies...
...In a letter to Lou Andreas-Salome, June 1, 1935, Freud wrote: "My one source of satisfaction is Anna...
...Anna Freud conducted the seminar with aplomb...
...She was then eighty-one years old, matriarch of Hampstead...
...Think how hard it must be to grow up in the limelight, to have the glare of publicity always upon oneself...
...But there is more: resolution, fear, concern, relief, eyes that speak of her recent interrogation, a mouth that, determinedly set as it is, nevertheless turns up at the corners as if to break at any moment into a tentative smile, then a hearty laugh...
...But there appears to have been none of this, none of that smoldering bitterness that corrodes human empathy when a younger, healthy person is poignantly needed by an older, ill one...
...Perhaps Anna Freud's intellectual independence from her father, her stature as a public persona in her own right, helps to account for the mutual respect, the reciprocity of tenderness, the humor and concern that by every account marked their relationship...
...There wasn't very much to the letter - just two sentences about who I was and that my long-range aim in life, or one of them, was to use psychoanalytic concepts in the study of social life and thought...
...The seminar over, Anna Freud headed for the door...
...I've forgotten the details but I'll never forget the moment when Anna Freud uttered, "Und now she is a happy woman, with a career and family und before she was just a case of (theatrical pause) penis envy...
...Moreover, she is truly independent of me...
...JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN...
...No, perhaps that was she...
...Perhaps this serves as a clue to that Anna Freud whose image seems to me most luminous, whose central trait is not her intellect but her capacity for a loyalty that was never obsequious, that was, instead, the chosen vocation of a remarkable woman for a father who, for sixteen years, fought a heroic, losing fight against the ravages of a painful cancer and, as he grew weaker, and withdrawn from public view, turned to his daughter as his public "voice" and his private succor...
...Anna Freud conducted the seminar with aplomb...
...indeed, he celebrated it...
...She was then eighty-one years old, matriarch of Hampstead...
...Anna Freud had been arrested and taken to Gestapo headquarters...
...Even Joseph Stalin's daughter was no loyal chip off the Russian block...
...Theorist, clinician, pioneer, teacher: these are the sure and certain markers of the public Anna Freud...
...at the most I serve as a catalyst...
...But there is more: resolution, fear, concern, relief, eyes that speak of her recent interrogation, a mouth that, determinedly set as it is, nevertheless turns up at the corners as if to break at any moment into a tentative smile, then a hearty laugh...
...She had grown to look like the pictures of her father in his old age - the same blend of sternness and humor, of strength and deep compassion that had not come "naturally" but was, instead, a hard-won achievement...
...She walked away, surrounded by friends and colleagues, a slight figure moving somewhat haltingly down the hallway...
...The photographer, Edmund Engelman, posed Anna Freud on March 22, 1938, shortly after the SS had invaded Bergasse 19 for a second time...
...embodied and revised his theory and method...
...Erik H. Erikson, Robert Coles, and many others cite her as their intellectual forebear and a source of their inspiration...
...She founded, edited, and contributed actively - until very recent years - to the multi-volumed Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, the definitive reference for the psychoanalytic study and treatment of the child and the practice of childhood therapy...
...Because she grinned, the audience did also...
...I met Anna Freud, fleetingly, in 1977...
...For there is no more important work to be done...
...There wasn't very much to the letter - just two sentences about who I was and that my long-range aim in life, or one of them, was to use psychoanalytic concepts in the study of social life and thought...
...The second image is a personal one...
...honored his legacy...
...She glanced at me, opened it, read it quickly, then said, "I'm always happy to meet someone who wants to do good with my father's work...
...There was no mistaking the real Anna Freud when she entered...
Vol. 110 • February 1983 • No. 3
