Historical Note: Hampstead War Nursery was founded by Anna Freud in 1940 in England as a foster care home for over 80 children of single-parented families. Together with her close friend Dorothy Burlingham and other colleagues, Anna Freud worked with the nursery children, helping them to survive the stress of war. Later the nursery was joined by a group of orphans from the Theresianstadt concentration camp. When the war was over, Anna Freud and Kate Friedlaender turned the foster home into a school for child psychoanalysis known as Hamstead Child-Therapy Courses and later Clinic. Freud’s and Burlingham’s studies and observations of the Nursery’s children have been reflected in their published studies Young Children in War-Time, Infants without Families, and An Experiment in Group Upbringing. Anna Freud’s work at the the clinic has been summarized in the Research at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic (1956-1965) and her book Normality and Pathology in Childhood (1965). In 2016, BPSI Archives acquired interviews of Anna Freud and her colleagues recorded in 1976 at Hampstead Clinic in London by a film maker, Joan Tewkesbury. The reel-to-reel audio tapes, accompanied transcripts and photographs can be accessed for research purposes. The audio reels have been digitized with the help of the American Psychoanalytic Foundation grant.
Summary: the collection contains nursery’s articles and bulletins, Katherine Robertson’s observations and the Foster Parents’ Plan for War Children reports of 1941-1950, photographs of the Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham and other Hampstead staff members in 1976, a copy of the film The Hampstead Child-Therapy Course and Clinic as well as audio interviews and respective transcripts not used in the film.
Finding Aid for this collection is posted here.
Please note that the BPSI Archives holds many other collections containing photographs and papers of Anna Freud or related to the Hampstead Clinic. Anna Freud’s letters are included in the Assorted Correspondence Collection, Heinz Hartmann’s File, and the Center For Advanced Psychoanalytic Study (CAPS) Archive. Her photographs and papers can be found in the BPSI Photograph III, Bibring Photograph, Grete Bibring, Helene Deutsch, David Pokross, Marian Putnam, Walter Langer, and Arthur Valenstein collections. The Oral History Transcript collections includes Lucille Ritvo’s talk with Anna Freud in 1963 as well as materials from the 2017 Oral History Workshop #79, Anna Freud Revisited.
Related BPSI Collections
Child Analysis Materials, 1926-1989
Putnam Children’s Center Collection, 1942-1991
Putnam Children’s Center Photographs, 1958-1966
Related Archives
Freud Museum in London Archives
Records of Foster Parents Plan International (1939-1994) at University of Rhode Island
Related Sites
The Anna Freud Centre in London
Anna Freud (1895-1982): Adoption History Project
The Carter-Jenkins Center: Anna Freud Materials
Plan (formerly Foster Parents Plan) International Website
