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Our History
In 1946 Dr. Anny Katan (pictured), a colleague of Anna Freud and her personal friend since childhood, immigrated to the United States following World War II. It was soon after her arrival that Dr. Anny met Ms. Hosley who had become Director of the Day Nursery Association earlier that year. Dr. Furman recalled that “Nell,” as she was known to her friends and colleagues, “was one of the new breed of social workers matured in the Depression, literally in the slums of New York, who were open to new ideas, such as psychoanalytic ones. She often said that Dr. Anny was the first professional with whom she ever talked who made good sense about children. Ms. Hosley was interested in things psychoanalytic. Dr. Anny was interested in day care centers. They formed a mutually respectful professional relationship that lasted more than a quarter of a century.”
This dream came to fruition in 1951. Originally known as the University Hospitals Nursery School, the program for three and four year old children operated out of a house in University Circle. Situated in a neighborhood bordering the campus, the house, with its bright red front door, was commonly known as the “Children’s House.” Throughout the decade of the 1950s it was in this setting that Dr. Anny and colleagues she recruited from Anna Freud’s child therapy training program in London worked to further develop and refine the “treatment-via-the-parent” method that we still use in our school to this day – a treatment approach uniquely suited for preschoolers. Dr. Robert Furman became Director in 1958. One of his first challenges was to assist Dr. Anny in her wish to train a new generation of therapists to work in the school. Along with Marion Barnes who had already received training from Dr. Anny, and her associates recruited from Hampstead who by then included Alice Rolnick, Joanna Benkendorf, Erna Furman, and Elizabeth Daunton, they inaugurated what continues to this day as the Hanna Perkins Course in Child Psychoanalysis, a child psychoanalytic training program that was originally made available only to non-medical candidates. It was with this program established and the school ten years old that the move to a new building at 2084 Cornell Rd. in University Circle was accomplished in 1961. For more than 30 years Dr. Furman continued as the Director of Hanna Perkins. These were important years characterized as much by expansion as consolidation. With regard to the School, the move to the Cornell building brought the opening of a kindergarten classroom to compliment the original nursery school program. In 1985, under the leadership of Mrs. Furman, who, during her fifty years of service to Hanna Perkins became its most widely published author and professional educator, our Toddler Program was developed. Regarding the course in child analysis, there were tumultuous years in the late 1960s when a decision was made by the Department of Psychiatry at CASE to no longer sponsor and support the program. This led in 1967 to the founding of the Cleveland Center for Research in Child Development (CCRCD) which took over the training program as well as the clinic which provided a place for those in training to work under supervision with children in analysis. The period between 1967 and 1979 was largely a time of consolidation. At regular three year intervals new candidates were accepted into training as their predecessors progressed and matriculated. The School flourished during these years of full census and much work and research was accomplished on behalf of children and their families. It was a time that saw the publication of three books: The Therapeutic Nursery School, Not by the Color of Their Skin, and A Child’s Parent Dies. The Center also began its expansion of its courses and consultation groups to the wider preschool community beyond the DNA. Even as this was a time of internal solidification, it was one of external transition. After Ms. Hosley retired as DNA Director in 1971 steps were gradually taken to merge the DNA and a number of other community social service agencies to form a new entity, the Center for Human Services (today known as the Center for Families and Children). By the late 1970s the decision had been made by CHS to discontinue its nursery school programs (even as it would keep open its day care centers). After numerous discussions between the boards of CHS and CCRCD, the decision was made that Hanna Perkins belonged to neither agency but to the people of Cleveland and that it should be operated as an independent entity. In practice though, the decision was also made that the Board of Trustees of CCRCD would be available to function simultaneously as the new Board of the autonomous Hanna Perkins. As part of the negotiations, it was also determined that the Cornell Road building would remain the property of Hanna Perkins. A final step in the transition process was when United Way agreed to keep the now independent Hanna Perkins in its group of supported agencies. This was accomplished, in part, by responding to a recommendation from United Way that we further expand our consultation work, something that was accomplished with the establishment of several outreach sites where we have maintained our consultation relationships ever since. The decade of the 1980s was also an active one. We inaugurated our annual meeting, now known as the Hanna Perkins Symposium/Forum. Several colleagues became interested in developing psychoanalytic schools in their communities and today there are schools established in Chapel Hill, Houston, Ann Arbor, and Washington, D.C. We began to publish our own journal, Child Analysis: Clinical, Theoretical, and Applied. This spring will mark the release of its 16th consecutive annual volume. With the development of the Toddler Program, a toddler development research project culminated in the publication of Toddlers and their Mothers. Other books published during that time were What Nursery School Teachers Ask Us About, and Helping Young Children Grow.
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As she became known in the Cleveland
community, parents of young children began to ask Dr. Anny for advice and
guidance. Recalling Freud’s work with the parents of Little Hans, and
remembering her own work with mothers on behalf of their children in war-ravaged
Holland, Dr. Anny, with the support of Ms. Hosley envisioned a therapeutic
nursery school where children would be helped to become ready for school while
their parents received guidance and support in fostering their children’s
development.