The papers of Anna Freud (1895-1982) span the years 1880-1995, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period between 1946 and 1982. The collection focuses on the work of Anna Freud, psychoanalyst and early leader in the field of child analysis. Freud's education prepared her to teach elementary school, which she did for several years. She relinquished this position to become her father's assistant and train in psychoanalysis under him. In 1925, she joined the executive board of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute and started work as a training analyst. In that same year, Freud began her lifelong association with Dorothy T. Burlingham, who had come to Vienna to be analyzed by Sigmund Freud. Over the years, their collaboration included joint authorship of several books and articles as well as the operation of nursery schools and a child therapy clinic. In 1938, Freud emigrated to England with her father and family to escape persecution under the Nazis. She remained in England for the rest of her life, conducting research in the field of child psychoanalysis at the Hampstead Clinic, which she had established in 1947. She traveled widely in the furtherance of child analysis and continued writing and lecturing up until a few years before her death at the age of eighty-six. Included in her papers are correspondence, writings, reports, patient case files, miscellaneous biographical information, and other material pertaining to her career and the history of the Freud family as well as the history of child analysis during her lifetime.

With the exception of some correspondence, poems, the Jackson Nursery files, and a few other personal files, the collection contains very little documentation of Freud's early life in Vienna. The papers primarily chronicle her life in London, particularly after 1946. Among the prominent correspondents are August Aichhorn, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Grete L. Bibring, Princess Marie Bonaparte, G. G. Bunzl, Dorothy T. Burlingham, Helene Deutsch, K. R. and Ruth Selke Eissler, M. Eitingon, Ernst L. Freud, Elisabeth R. Geleerd, Joseph Goldstein, Heinz and Dora Hartmann, John C. Hill, Willi Hoffer, Edith Banfield Jackson, Ernest Jones, Anny Katan, M. Masud R. Khan, Ernst and Marianne Kris, Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, Rudolph Maurice Loewenstein, Charles L. Mandelstam, J. Moussaieff Masson, Humberto Nagera, Lottie M. Newman, Herman Nunberg, Mark Paterson, James Robertson, Joseph Sandler, Max Schur, Ruth Thomas, and Robert Waelder. The major subjects discussed in the Correspondence series concern psychoanalysis in general and child analysis in particular.

The Writings series consists of drafts of books, classroom lectures, interviews and panel discussions, eulogies and tributes, articles, essays, lectures, speeches, poems, and reviews. One of Freud's works, Normality and Pathology in Childhood, is represented in draft form in both English and German. There are also updated forewords for several early works reissued in the 1960s and 1970s. The largest section of the Writings is composed of papers written on a variety of subjects in the field of child analysis, such as aggression, emotional and social development, feeding habits, behavior, child rearing, nursery schools, relations between child and parent, early personality development, psychoanalytic technique, child guidance, defense mechanisms, regression, child observation, psychic trauma, adolescence, neurosis, psychopathology, mental and physical health, and diagnosis of psychological problems. Anna Freud also wrote numerous forewords, introductions, and prefaces to works by others. Included at the end of the writings series are writings by others, which consist primarily of papers written by colleagues of the Hampstead Clinic and other institutions on various aspects of child analysis.

The Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic series consists primarily of funding reports dating from 1960 through 1983. It also contains financial reports, enclosures which had become separated from their original documents, progress reports from the United States National Institute of Mental Health, a small number of patient case files, and information concerning the twentieth anniversary celebration of the clinic.

The Miscellany series contains information regarding Freud's professional career aside from the Hampstead Clinic, such as appointment calendars and office diaries, and files on Hampstead Nurseries and Jackson Nursery. There are also files on the awards and honors she received throughout her life, biographical files on various family members, friends, and associates, information on homes occupied by the Freud family, financial and medical records, records on dogs owned by the Freuds, and information regarding trips. The files on Sigmund Freud are of particular interest.

The Additions series contains newly acquired material, material transferred from other collections, and formerly closed material. Addition I was created in 2002 and features material from Anna Freud's early years in England. Included are condolence letters written to Anna and Ernst Freud by friends and associates on the death of Sigmund Freud in 1939. Her wartime work is recorded in reports, 1941-1951, from the Hampstead Nurseries, a facility run by Freud and Dorothy T. Burlingham for children whose lives were disrupted by war. Reports written after 1946 follow the children's progress after their return to family life. Accompanying the Hampstead reports are reports from a hostel in Sussex, England, for young concentration camp survivors. Also in the addition are numerous letters by Princess Marie Bonaparte between 1938 and 1941 detailing her struggles as an analyst, wife, and mother during the early war years. Addition II contains the contents of a 2010 acquisition as well as formerly closed correspondence opened for research between 2009 and 2014. Addition III is comprised of acquisitions received after 2010 along with formerly closed correspondence, writings, patient case files, and miscellaneous materials opened for research between 2017 and 2025 period.