Little Hans Case Study
April 22, 2013
Introduction
Sigmund Freud is definitely the most well known theorist of the world. He has made his place in the psychology field with his clinical thoughts and knowledgeable theories. The main idea of his work is the significance of the first few years of life in the consequent development of an individual. The Psychoanalysts have long acknowledged as the complicated communication between psychoanalytic theories and clinical data. The clinical data are used to give proof for psychoanalytic models while the theoretical model used by the psychoanalyst.
This delicate relationship between clinical and theory data can be observed in the narration of explanation of Freud’s ‘Little Hans’. Freud had never met Hans; he talked about this issue with his father. Hans mostly spends his time alone with his mother at home. At the age of five Herbert became a patient of Freud who recognized him in his text as "Little Hans". He was the topic of Freud's early but a widespread study of the Oedipus complex and castration anxiety. Freud saw Herbert only once and did not explore the child himself, but rather control the child's father who agreed for the analysis and sent notes to Freud.
Sigmund Freud revised his analysis of the case after a number of psychoanalysts explained this case according to their specific models of the mind. The psychoanalysts include John Bowlby, Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein.
He thought that children with emotional conflicts, familiarity and their future alterations depend on those circumstances that how those conflicts are resolved. He explains that many of the conflicts will illustrate in the person’s dreams and dreams, and these conflicts are so ominous that they can emerge in concealed forms in the symbolic shapes.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was born in 6 May 1856 and died on 23 September 1939. He was an Austrian neurologist and recognized as the “Father of Psychoanalysis”. He was qualified as a Doctor of Medicine in 1881. He was selected in a University as lecturer in neuropathology and then became a Professor in 1902. His theories and work assisted outline of vision of personality, sexuality , babyhood, memory and therapy. His ideas had such a well-built influence on psychology that a complete school of thought emerged from his work. While it was finally substituted by the increase of behaviorism, psychoanalysis had a long-lasting force on both psychotherapy and psychology.
Discuss how psychoanalytic theory conceptualized the phobia of Little Hans.
This case study played an important role for Freud in strengthening his latest theories regarding childish sexuality. His major conclusion about the survival of the Oedipus complexes, sexual life and theories based on children, had formerly been consequent from the psychoanalysis of adults, This Little Hans case gives the autonomous evidence Freud wanted, using clinical stuff acquired from a child. The case of Little Hans conveys convincing clinical models, which established many theoretical reports made in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.
The Oedipus complex is a significant theory in Psychoanalysis and Freud thought that this case study of Little Hans carries this idea. He believed that children have five stages of development, which is known as the psychosexual stages. These stages include soral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency period and the genital stage. (Freud, 1909) It is the first three stages, which take place in the first five years of life of a child. (Gross, 1999)
Freud explained the data in a new way without presenting any latest data. He revised the case in turn into critical to all post-Freudian descriptions of the source of anxiety because it began the prospect of thoughts about the effect of the surroundings of stages of