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Review of Key Points
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Anna Freud began her career as a teacher. This concern for children continued throughout her career, much of which was spent caring for children at the Hampstead War Nursery (which later became the Hampstead Clinic, and is now called the Anna Freud Centre, as a tribute to the career of Anna Freud).
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As her father had, Anna Freud described defense mechanisms as the means by which the ego avoids the anxiety associated with being unable to meet the demands of the id or the constraints of the superego.
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Anna Freud was one of the first psychoanalysts to work with children, and she used the same basic approach that she did with adults.
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When working with children, Anna Freud felt it was important to fill in gaps that the child could not (such as connecting manifest and latent content in dreams). She also believed that the psychoanalyst should help to educate the child with regard to his/her relationships.
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Since all aspects of relationships have importance, Melanie Klein proposed that the death-instinct and aggression are just as important as the life-instinct (Eros) and libido.
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Klein proposed that an infant goes through two developmental orientations: the paranoid-schizoid position later develops into the depressive position.
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Anna Freud and Melanie Klein disagreed about how fully the child could be psychoanalyzed, and how young they could be during psychoanalysis.
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In order for a child to develop a healthy personality and realize their true self, according to Winnicott, the child must have a good enough mother (and good enough parents).
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The transitional experience that children must go through may be facilitated by transitional objects (such as a blanket or teddy bear).
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Winnicott was an advocate of the Squiggle Game, a therapeutic technique that allows children to draw pictures to represent their thoughts and feelings.
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In order for the child to develop a sense of individuality, according to Mahler, the child must go through a process known as separation-individuation.
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Kohut believed that a certain measure of narcissism was necessary for the development of individuality.
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During psychoanalysis, the analyst can provide each of these types of relationships through mirroring transference, idealizing transference, and twinship transference. This allows the patient to feel more real and more substantial.
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Otto Kernberg has offered a perspective that blends all of the neo-Freudian and object relations theories together, suggesting that they represent a continuum of stages in human development.