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

Children usually do not blame themselves for getting lost.
Anna Freud

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

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

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

How can one know anything at all about people?
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

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

I am no longer afraid to say anything.
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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes the most beautiful thing is precisely the one that comes unexpectedly and unearned.
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

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