One of the key themes of Freud’s work is the importance of the first few years of life in the subsequent development of personality. He also believed that children experience emotional conflicts, and their future adjustment depends on how well these conflicts are resolved.
Another theme within Freud’s work concerns the "unconscious mind which is the part of our mind which we are not aware of. Freud believed that the unconscious contains unresolved conflicts and has a powerful effect on our behaviour and experience. He argued that many of these conflicts will show up in our fantasies and dreams, but the conflicts are so threatening that they appear in disguised forms, in the shape of symbols.
The Oedipus complex is an important concept in Psychoanalysis and Freud believed that this case study of Little Hans supports this idea. Freud believed that children pass through five stages of development, known as the psychosexual stages because of Freud's emphasis on sexuality as the basic drive in development. These stages are: the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency period and finally the genital stage. It is the first three stages which take place in the first five years of life of a child.
The phallic stage, from three to five years old was the stage where the child's sexual identification was established. During this stage Freud hypothesised that a young boy would experience what he called the Oedipus complex. This would provide the child with highly disturbing conflicts, which had to be resolved by the child identifying with the same-sexed parent.
Freud thought that, during the phallic stage, the young boy develops an intense sexual love for his mother. Because of this, he sees his father as a rival, and wants to get rid of him. The father, however, is far bigger and more powerful than the young boy, and so the child develops a fear that, seeing him as a rival, his father will castrate him. Because it is impossible to live with the continual castration-threat anxiety provided by this conflict, the young boy develops a mechanism for coping with it, using a defence mechanism known as 'identification with the aggressor'. He stresses all the ways that he is similar to his father, adopting his father's attitudes, mannerisms and actions, feeling that if his father sees him as similar, he will not feel hostile towards him.
Aim
The aim of the study was to report the findings of the treatment of a five-year-old boy for his phobia of horses.
Procedure/Method
Freud used a case study method to investigate Little Hans’ phobia. However the case study was actually carried out by the boy’s father who was a friend and supporter of Freud. Freud probably only met the boy once. The father reported to Freud via correspondence and Freud gave directions as how to deal with the situation based on his interpretations of the father’s reports.
Freud noted that it was the special relationship between Hans and his father that allowed the analysis to progress and for the discussions with the boy to be so detailed and so intimate. The first reports of Hans are when he was 3 years old.
Findings/Results
As this was a very in depth case study there are many findings.
The first reports of Hans are when he was 3 years old when he developed an active interest in his ‘widdler’ (penis), and also those of other people. For example on one occasion he asked ‘Mummy, have you got a widdler too?’
Throughout this time, the main theme of his fantasies and dreams was widdlers and widdling.
When he was about three years and six months old his mother told him not to touch his widdler or else she would call the doctor to come and cut it off. Around the same time, Hans’ mother gave birth to his sister Hanna, and Hans expressed jealousy towards her though this disappeared after a few months.
Hans had considerable interest in other children, especially girls, and formed emotional attachments with them.
When Hans was almost
