Sexuality of Anna Freud

This research examines the life of Anna Freud with a view toward assessing the sexuality of Sigmund Freud's youngest child. Interest in the question of Anna Freud's sexuality derives from descriptions of the woman as being distant and sexually repressed (Heller, 1992, pp. 4874), the fact that she never married or developed a physically intimate relationship with a man (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 63), and her long and close relationship with Dorothy Burlingham, which Anna Freud herself was concerned could be misconstrued as being homosexual in character (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 196).

The focus of this examination of the sexuality of Anna Freud is on the development of a line of thinking that will indicate that she was homosexually inclined, asexual, or ascetic. To remove any element of mystery from this examination, it should be noted that, in so far as any living person knows, Anna Freud throughout her life had no physical sexual relationship with any other personmale or female, remaining virginal (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 137). Thus, the goal of this examination is not to establish that Anna Freud did or did not have a physical sexual relationship with another person nor, if she did have such a relationship, to establish the character of that relationship. Rather, as it is generally accepted that Anna Freud never throughout her life had a physical sexual relationship with another person, the goal of this examination is to identify the

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he more cosmetic perceptions of femininity (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 309). In her fantasy life, Anna Freud "often identified with male story characters" (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 75). Anna Freud and her father "both associated her decisive career step with her masculinity" (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 108). The decisive career step was her decision to sublimate any independent career aspirations of her own in order to work for and with her father to foster and protect the concept of psychoanalysis. Through this action she perceived that she was surrendering the feminine side of her life (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 108). Anna Freud also contended in her earliest essay that young women adopted masculine roles "in order to avoid fatherdaughter incestuous desires" (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 328). In this essay, Anna Freud contended that the female subject of the essay "in effect, made herself emotionally into a male homosexual but avoided any kind of sexual involvement" (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 328). Anna Freud's tendency to identify herself as more masculine than feminine offers little insight with respect to contentions that she could have been afflicted with either a hyposexual desire disorder or a sexual arousal disorder, nor does this tenden

Category: Psychology - S