"There has never been anything like a classical child analysis". Clinical discussions with Anna Freud, 1970-1971

This paper reports on a series of clinical discussions with Anna Freud, faculty and trainees at the Hampstead Clinic in 1970-1971. Anna Freud's comments are published here for the first time. The meetings concerned the nature and use of relationships in work with children who do not have a well-defined neurosis. If parochial borders are erased among the domains of upbringing, education, and psychoanalysis, potential therapeutic fertility and strength can increase. The clinical material in the paper makes it possible to explore the old and new aspects of the treatment relationship, such as the transferential, the externalization of the self-representational, the developmental, and so forth. This is a personal account of a formative experience during training.