Anna Freud

Whereas most physicians' offices were dark and bare.

And I had the occasion when I was in medical school, I was working in London for a few months, and I knew that Anna Freud was still alive and practicing in London.

So I sent her a little note and introduced myself as a medical student from Harvard.

And to my amazement, she gave me an appointment the next week.

that I was avoiding myself so sometimes I think we look at other people's behavior with a microscope to avoid looking at our own or maybe what we're feeling so it's like maybe we need to ask ourselves instead of saying well why is he so emotionally avoidant or why can't he do all these things it's like why are you spending that much time chasing after somebody who's emotionally unavailable that's a good question we should figure out here that's something

we can control you know yeah no absolutely and it's like well we're so it's so much easier to put the spotlight on somebody else's behavior rather than as you said interrogating your attraction to that because surely that's not natural if our instinct as humans is to bond and is to find partnership for survival purposes and for belonging purposes it's somebody who does not care about you or does not show you signs that they do or who doesn't make you feel good that should not be something that you go towards and yet somewhere along the way that has been equated with love and purpose and achievement for you and so now you do and it's just a classic coping mechanism right if we have a look at any of like the Freudian well Anna Freud's like coping mechanisms or any of the others that have been established in psychology intellectualization is like often pretty top of the list for people who have a good sense of their feelings because it's so easy to think that you can out think a problem that sometimes you just need to feel and the feeling is this person makes me feel terrible this person makes me feel worthless this person makes me feel anxious But intellectualizing it feels more practical, feels more achievable and is a distraction from having to just like sit with the fact that maybe this just isn't right.

And there's a bunch of other coping mechanisms that we use.

Another big one is like busyness.

And I think that he was clearly laboring under sort of a misapprehension on his own part, but he was also somebody who was discovering this science and describing it within his own time.

There's a lot of criticism levied um towards something regarding what you were just mentioning but also about you know not really working with children you know making a lot of extrapolations and such so it kind of took some decades later on for you know even his daughter anna freud to you know maybe have a little bit more actual experience with children adolescents to expand his theories So I think you started something very good, but I do think that we needed to broaden its applications because I think it is incorrect to say that people can't benefit from psychotherapy because of age.

And I've seen it happen.

I've seen it make a big difference, even within short periods of time for patients who are later in life as well.