["Signs for the whole rest of the life". The house as symbol and autobiographical substrate in letters, dreams and literary texts by by Anna Freud].

The house as object and symbol preoccupied Anna Freud from childhood onwards. This article traces these ideas in letters, autobiographical documents and literary texts. It focuses on the phantasmal construction of a dream house; on the organisation, loss and later efforts to recover Hochrotherd; on casual birthday poems dedicated to Anna, praising the country house, as well as on the purchase of a weekend cottage in Walberswick reflected in dreams related to the process of inner detachment from the dead father. A fluent interchange between reality and imagination comes into focus, high- lighting the dimension of inwardness rather than that of biographical reality.