Anna Freud Revisted

An interesting 'by the way' occurred when Rob McAlpine was giving his presentation last week at the pilot training program for treatment of anxiety disorders in children and young people.

In stressing the need for a "multi-modal" approach to treating this condition, he referred to the large body of work that was conducted by Anna Freud and her colleagues concerning anxiety in kiddies. Anna is known as the founder of child psychoanalysis.

It seems the recent research has given credence to the psychodynamic model, originated by Anna's papa Sigmund. Much of the kudos and consequent ideas comes from her meticulous note keeping. (Interestingly, Sigmund wasn't big on notes). There are numerous documented successes - kids just stopped being anxious after her interventions.