1. (1991). Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 19: 612-619
The Relationship of Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham
Michael John Burlingham
I am grateful for the opportunity of reviewing my thinking on the subject of Dorothy Burlingham's
relationship with Anna Freud. Although my biography of Dorothy (Burlingham, 1989) has been fixed in print,
my thinking of course continues to evolve, and, when I was preparing this, I was curious to see what would
emerge. The difference, it appears, is one of emphasis or degree. Having published the facts of my
grandmother's life, and my interpretation of them, in an unsparing though, I trust, not unsympathetic fashion,
there seems to be more room for compassion.
Among Sigmund Freud's collection of antiquities is a Roman bottle of Mediterranean, possibly Cypriot,
origin and nearly 2000 years old. According to Lucilla Burns of the British Museum, it is
chiefly remarkable for its brilliant iridescent sheen; the underlying color is basically greenish gray, but it is
streaked and swirled with mother-of-pearl, peacock blue and green, mauve, orange, pale blue turquoise, gold, and
red, all manifesting themselves in turn and in different combinations as the vessel is looked at under differing
light. (Gamwell and Wells, 1989, p. 121)
This object is not anomalous to Freud's collection; there are over a hundred examples of ancient glass,
many bearing this unique property characteristic of its decay. It was, however, the ideas embodied by these
artworks not their aesthetic qualities that primarily attracted Freud. The beauty caused by slow oxidization did
not prompt Freud to purchase the bottle; rather it was the evidence of its antiquity, and its cultural clues. Freud's
beginnings as a collector in the 1890s paralleled the beginnings of psychoanalysis itself quite simply because in
ancient art was a compelling metaphor for his own discoveries. Like archaeologists, Freud and his followers
would “bring to the light of day after their long burial the priceless though mutilated relics of antiquity” (Freud,
1905, p. 12). In other words, to the Freudian mind, the ancient art object was like the manifest content of a
dream or a neurotic symptom or
Presented at the 34th Annual Meeting of The American Academy of Psychoanalysis, May 1990, New York.
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some other unconscious manifestation; to Freud the excavated art object was priceless but in an illusory,
referential way, in what it revealed about an unknown dimension. This, in brief, was the course in art
appreciation received by Anna Freud in her Vienna girlhood.
Meanwhile, in New York, Dorothy Tiffany was getting a different education. In 1895, the year of Anna
Freud's birth, Dorothy's father, Louis Comfort Tiffany, had struck the so-called “Tiffany colors,” by which he
emulated in his vases the oxidization process of ancient glass. According to Tiffany, he had at last succeeded in
“reversing the action in such a way as to arrive at the effects without disintegration” (Tiffany Studios brochure
quoted in Koch, 1964, p. 121). For Tiffany, archeology was no metaphor but the real ally of his imagination. In
watching her father at work, therefore, Dorothy was also being schooled, albeit unwittingly, in the working of
the unconscious mind. But Dorothy's education came from observing the creator, artist, and dreamer, while
Anna Freud learned to view art more from the curatorial side, as it were, as something to be identified,
catalogued, accessioned, and interpreted.
Some 30 years later, these two youngest daughters of famous fathers met for the first time and began their
lifelong, mutually rewarding association. When Dorothy arrived in Vienna, however, her outlook seemed pretty
bleak. Her mother, for whom she had felt an uncritical adoration, had died when Dorothy was 12. For complex
reasons, Dorothy was alienated from her father and had, four years previously, separated from her husband, a
New York surgeon suffering from a manic depressive psychosis. The lives of her four children, meanwhile,
were being shaped in the vacuum of a broken marriage, and the eldest of them, Bob, had grown unmanageable.
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2. She was at her wit's end, literally trying to distance the children from the influence of their father, on the one
hand, while also trying to nurture them and regain her own balance and direction, on the other. When she and
her children arrived in Vienna, in 1925, it was in the hope that psychoanalysis could provide some answers,
could solve some problems, in what had become a hopelessly tangled situation. Her immediate objective,
however, was to get psychoanalytic help for ten-year-old Bob.
It is not unreasonable to assume that Anna Freud was touched by Dorothy's courage in the face of
adversity. She had left everything behind, had traveled 4000 miles to put her son in a form of therapy that then
had virtually no literature. Although the basic
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tenets of psychoanalysis as practiced on adults were known in the States, they remained highly controversial.
The analysis of children was entirely new, however, and more controversial still. Anna Freud was in only her
third year of treating children and had published but one short paper on the subject. Thus, one might again
reasonably assume that Anna Freud fathomed the depths of isolation and despair that had driven Dorothy to
take such a chance, and that she quickly resolved to help Dorothy with every means at her disposal. Thus, not
only was Bob Burlingham accepted by Anna Freud as her patient, but his eight-year-old sister Mabbie was, too.
Dorothy herself began analysis, first with Theodor Reik and then, starting in 1927, with Professor Freud
himself. This analysis lasted until Freud's death, 12 years later.
The therapeutic relationship between the Burlinghams and Freuds was quickly complemented by a personal
one between Dorothy and Anna, as indicated less than nine months after the Burlinghams' arrival in Vienna,
when they joined the Freuds on their summer vacation in Semmering. This practice was to be repeated every
summer while in Austria, and, in 1929, Dorothy moved her family into Berggasse 19, taking the fourth floor
apartment two flights above the Freuds. The reason for this implausible turn of events is to be found in Anna
Freud's technique of child analysis, a technique that maximized contact between the child's mother and the
analyst and borrowed liberally from Anna Freud's experience as an elementary schoolteacher. The child analyst,
believed Anna Freud, could be most effective when she had established herself as an authority “even greater”
than the child's parents, when she had succeeded in “putting herself in the place of the child's ego ideal,” and
could exert a direct influence upon the child's development (Freud, 1973, p. 60). The analyst, in other words,
was to step out from behind the veil of neutrality and set a good example, while at the same time, through
means adaptive to the nature of children like play therapy, interpret the unconscious material. This approach she
referred to as an “educational admixture” (Freud, 1973, p. 167), that is, it mixed therapeutic and educational
aims. It is, therefore, not difficult to see how this educative approach to therapy could, under the right
circumstances, evolve into a therapeutic approach to the education and upbringing of children. And this is
precisely what occurred with the young Burlinghams. By the fall of 1929, Freud was referring to an American
family, “whose children my daughter is bringing up analytically with a firm hand” (quoted in Peters, 1985, pp.
119-120).
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The advantages of this arrangement for Dorothy were obvious. She not only got help for Bob but for
Mabbie, too. Her daughter Tinky and son Mikey would also take their analytic turn with Anna Freud. Dorothy
was quick to realize that she, too, could benefit from therapy and, indeed, that the children would reap
additional benefits from her own treatment. Analytic awareness also proved useful in close discussions with
Anna Freud about the children's treatment and welfare. These discussions in turn drew Dorothy deeper into
psychoanalytic thinking and a quickening relationship with Anna Freud. It was from that point a short step to a
career as a child analyst specializing, naturally, in the mother-child relationship, the field of her personal
experience. Warmly embraced by the Freuds, accepted as a friend, analysand, and colleague, and virtually
adopted as a family member, Dorothy had, in the span of a few short years, been given a miraculous new start in
life for which she was rightfully and eternally grateful.
The key to all this was, of course, the children. Bob and Mabbie were among Anna Freud's very first child
analysands. Their case studies, plus that of their American friend, Adelaide Sweetser, represented vital building
blocks for Anna Freud's classic text, Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis, published in 1927. And
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3. so, in this respect, the arrival of Dorothy Burlingham and her children a year and a half earlier had also proved
useful to Anna Freud. With time came a greater possibility, the chance to fulfill one of Miss Freud's most
powerful, and forbidden, wishes: to have children and a family of her own. One need not delve too deeply into
Anna Freud's bond with her father to spot the taboo, since her life was inarguably bound to his. And she, who
could not marry, could not, under conventional circumstances, have children. In short, from both the
professional and personal points of view, Anna Freud's notable altruism was laced with a healthy dose of
self-interest. In fact, the issue of self-interest competing with altruism (or, more specifically, the defense
mechanism of altruistic surrender) had recently figured into the second phase of her own analysis, in
1924-1925.
Whatever the merits of a technique that blended therapeutic and educational aims, that merged the roles of
psychoanalyst and educator, therapist and authority figure, analyst and parent, such a technique laid a bridge to
Anna Freud's upbringing of the Burlingham children. Her role as their analytic stepparent simply took her
approach to the logical extreme. Her analytic stepparenting today seems to represent something of an uneasy
compromise
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between two impulses, the impulse to analyze and the impulse to parent. Anna Freud herself saw a conflict at
early date. In February 1926, she was already sensing the danger inherent in the therapy she was providing Bob
and Mabbie. To Max Eitingon she wrote that she was all too often having
thoughts which go along with my work but do not have a proper place in it…. I think sometimes that I want not
only to make them healthy but also, at the same time, to have them, or at least have something of them, for myself.
Temporarily, of course, this desire is useful for my work, but sometime or another it really will disturb them, and
so, on the whole, I really cannot call my need other than stupid. (Anna Freud to Max Eitington, February 19,
1926. Quoted in Young-Bruehl, 1988, p. 133)
However Anna Freud's technique of child analysis may be said to have evolved, her analytic stepparenting
of the Burlinghams remained fundamentally unchanged. Despite her early apprehensions, she continued trying
to make them healthy while, at the same time, having a little something of them for herself. One understands
why she would not sever her personal ties with the Burlingham family and, indeed, why it was in their and her
interest not to. Less apparent today is why Anna Freud felt it important that she and only she continue as Bob's
and Mabbie's analyst more or less indefinitely. Speculation on this point is not satisfying. Of course Anna Freud
had herself been analyzed by her father and a precedent set. The line between the practice of psychoanalysis and
a psychoanalytically informed life was less finely drawn then, and in the Freud family this was particularly true.
But one senses something more in Anna's relationship with the young Burlinghams. They were the closest she
came to having children of her own, and therefore, perhaps, in her relationship with them was an ambivalence
expressed in no other sphere of her life, a life otherwise wholly devoted to her father and his heritage. Perhaps,
she was not willing to accept completely the good fortune of fate having, after all, provided her with a family of
her own.
It was different with Dorothy, a female friend, colleague, companion, and soul mate, fully committed to the
Freuds and to psychoanalysis. Their collaborations in Vienna and London are well known, most prominently, of
course, the Edith Jackson Project, the Hampstead War Nurseries, the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and
Clinic, or Anna Freud Centre, as it is known today. To many of Dorothy's grandchildren, however, the crux of
their lives was like the government's side to breaking news, the official story,
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something to be taken with a grain of salt. We were, perhaps unfortunately, about as interested in the Clinic as
Dorothy had been in the Tiffany Studios. For some of us, however, time has changed this attitude. The life that
Anna and Dorothy lived together was clearly a remarkable and highly productive one, full of challenge,
frustration, disappointment, and triumph. They remained to the end vital, active, and the closest of friends,
making the best of circumstances and contributing to society and to their own happiness. And, to the end, they
succeeded in keeping absolute conviction in the cause to which they had devoted their lives. Theirs was an
unshakable, seemingly impenetrable faith, at times infuriating but ultimately admirable. In a world of
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4. half-measures and relative standards, their belief in the application of reason to irrationality was absolute. As
Dorothy wrote toward the end of her life, Anna Freud “is an amazing person…. She has a talent like her father's
to see things clearly, to see further than others, and to follow what she believes in without reservations. She can
enjoy so much too, beauty of the intellect as well as the soul. I have been very lucky” (Dorothy T. Burlingham
to Michael John Burlingham, April 3, 1975. Quoted in Burlingham, 1989, p. 312).
The music played at Dorothy's funeral in 1979 was played again at Anna's three years later, “The Farewell
of a Friend” from Gustav Mahler's “The Song of the Earth.” The final footnote to my book, concerning this
choice, might have been better presented as a coda. It reads,
This music reached far deeper than the world-weary theme with which Dorothy and Anna identified. It would
seem fateful that both Louis Tiffany and Sigmund Freud had had personal dealings with Mahler shortly before his
death. The composer had written “The Song of the Earth” in Austria over the summer of 1908, after learning that
his heart was giving out. This had not prevented him from returning to New York in the fall to resume his position
as a conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. It was probably to the following year, after Mahler had joined the
newly founded Philharmonic Society of New York, that his widow referred, when she wrote, “Shortly after the
founding of Mahler's orchestra we received a card from Louis Tiffany. He wrote that he was afraid of people,
could he attend rehearsals unseen? Mahler granted the request and so we were invited to a party at Tiffany's. This
was the affair that Alma Mahler Werfel described as “a dream: Arabian nights in New York.” Later, in the
summer of 1910, back in Austria, the dying composer spent an afternoon on Freud's couch, during which the
Professor unearthed “the infantile pattern behind [his] philosophical facade.” What Tiffany and Mahler definitely
shared in common
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was the struggle to reach essentially unattainable ideals of art, and their rejection of everyday, commonplace
reality. Mahler, Freud believed, was driven by a Holy Mary complex or mother fixation. And it is possible that
Louis's obsession with beauty and passion for flowers may have been interpreted by Dorothy as the parallel
expression of an unrealizable, infantile longing for his mother. Thus did “The Farewell of a Friend” reflect not
only a source of Dorothy's own childhood sorrows, but also her attempts to overcome them in analysis, the
reasons for her children's analyses, and her partnership with Anna Freud; indeed, her entire life. (Burlingham,
1989, pp. 347-348)
This, then, brings us back to our beginning, Dorothy's and Anna's respective art education, which, as we
have seen, fit together like the two sides of a coin. Their relationship was ultimately like a twinship based on
mutual identification; each infused the other in positive ways. Their roles may even be said to have flipped, in
the manner observed by Dorothy in her studies of identical twins. Ultimately, at 20 Maresfield Garden, it was
Dorothy who provided Anna with a much-needed nurturing, protective environment. And, at their cottages in
Suffolk and County Cork, Ireland, their relationship revealed its poetry in shared weaving and horticultural
activities and an appreciation for natural beauty. With its gardens, Far End in Walberswick especially recalled
their earlier retreat at Hochroterd, outside Vienna, where Anna Freud once wrote, “I like it about farm life that it
brings down to a simple formula, even psychic things” (Anna Freud to Dorothy Burlingham, Summer 1933
(n.d.); quoted in Burlingham, 1989, p. 217). If Dorothy may be said to have made an intellectual metamorphosis
“out of love” for Anna Freud, (Victor Ross (Rosenfeld) quoted in Burlingham, 1989, p. 222), Anna Freud's
analytic approach to art was surely broadened and her appreciation deepened through her association with
Dorothy and her family. Although no relationship is perfect, or perfectly equal, in their relationship Dorothy
Burlingham and Anna Freud had much for which to be grateful.
References
Burlingham, M. J. (1989), The Last Tiffany: A Biography of Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham, Atheneum, New
York.
Freud, A. (1927), The Writings of Anna Freud, Vol. 1, New York, International Universities Press.
Freud, A. (1973), Introduction to psychoanalysis, lectures for child analysts and teachers 1922-1945, The
Writings of Anna Freud, Vol. 1, New York, International Universities Press.
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Freud, S. (1905), Standard Edition, Vol. 7.[]
Gamwell, L., and Wells, R. (Eds.) (1989), Sigmund Freud and Art: His Personal Collection of Antiquities,
WARNING! This text is printed for the personal use of the owner of the PEP Archive CD and is copyright to
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5. Harry N. Abrams, New York.
Koch, R. (1964), Louis C. Tiffany, Rebel in Glass, Crown, New York.
Peters, U. H. (1985), Anna Freud, a Life Dedicated to Children, Schocker Books, New York.
Young-Bruehl, E. (1988), Anna Freud: A Biography, Summit Books, New York.
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Article Citation
Burlingham, M. J. (1991). The Relationship of Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham. Journal of the American
Academy of Psychoanalysis 19: 612-619
WARNING! This text is printed for the personal use of the owner of the PEP Archive CD and is copyright to
the Journal in which it originally appeared. It is illegal to copy, distribute or circulate it in any form whatsoever.