His legacy was continued by his daughter Anna Freud in her pursuit of psychotherapy and her fathers theories as applied to children and adolescents.
[1] In fact, it was her work at the Nursery and the Clinic which allowed Anna to perfect her techniques and establish a therapy specifically designed for improving child and adolescent mental health.
If a certain aspect of development lagged, such as personal hygiene or eating habits, the therapist could then assume that some trauma had occurred and could then address it directly through therapy.
Foremost, Anna knew that she could not expect to create situations of transference with the children as her father had done with his adult patients.
Even when children were being housed at the Clinic, Anna encouraged mothers to visit frequently to ensure a stable attachment was formed between parent and child.
[2] In recent years there has been a shift in analytic technique for severely disturbed or traumatized children from a conflict- and insight-oriented approach to a focused, mentalization- oriented therapy.