Scope and Content Note
The papers of Peter Heller (1920-1998) span the years 1925-1992 and consist of material relating to the psychoanalysis of Heller by Anna Freud between 1929 and 1932 when he was a child in Vienna. Freud kept notes of Heller's analysis and in 1974 forwarded the entire file to him. Included in the papers are original jottings, drawings, and poetry by the analysand, as well as reproductions and copies of correspondence between Heller and Freud, 1972-1981, discussing Freud's gift of the items to Heller and his subsequent use and publication of the material.
The collection illustrates Anna Freud's early methods as an analyst and represents ideas and values expressed in her book, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1937). Heller marked and numbered the material after receiving it and edited it for two versions he published. The first, Eine Kinderanalyse bei Anna Freud, coedited with Günther Bittner, appeared in 1983, and the second, A Child Analysis with Anna Freud, translated by Salomé Burckhardt and Mary Weigand, was published in 1990.
The papers also include files relating to the Hietzing School conducted by Dorothy T. Burlingham, Eva Marie Rosenfeld, and Anna Freud in Vienna between 1927 and 1932. Most of the school's students were either undergoing analysis like Heller or had parents in analysis. The files consist of correspondence, transcripts of interviews and conversations, reminiscences, writings, and responses to a questionnaire prepared by Heller concerning the school's founding, administration, and progressive curriculum based on the "project method" and psychoanalytic pedagogy. Correspondents include Dorothy T. Burlingham and Eva Marie Rosenfeld; the school's first teachers, Peter Blos and Erik H. Erikson; and a number of its students, including Mary Burlingham Schmiderer ("Mabbie") and Katrina Burlingham Valenstein, Eva Rosenfeld's son, Victor Ross, and Anna Freud's nephew, W. Ernest Freud.