Anna Freud Quotes & Sayings

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

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

A first visit to a madhouse is always a shock. — Anna Freud

How can one know anything at all about people? — Anna Freud

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

My different personalities leave me in peace now. — Anna Freud

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

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

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

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

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

Sex is something you do. Sexuality is something you are. — Anna Freud

It is there all the time. — Anna Freud

I am no longer afraid to say anything. — Anna Freud

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

The horrors of war, pale beside the loss of a mother — Anna Freud

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

The selection of leadership must follow practical considerations. Maybe I look at things too pessimistically? — Anna Freud

Children usually do not blame themselves for getting lost. — 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

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

Things are not as we would like them to be. There is only one way to deal with it, namely to try and be all right oneself. — 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

Instead of turning away from them (war conditions) in instinctive horror, as people seem to expect, the child may turn towards them with primitive excitement. The real danger is not that the child, caught up all innocently in the whirlpool of war, will be shocked into illness. The danger lies in the fact that the destruction ranging in the outer world may meet the very real aggressiveness ranging in the inside of the child — Anna Freud

I am glad that I do not have any children. — Anna Freud