Article
Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy
Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben
Freud's case history of "Little Hans", a five-year-old boy who developed a phobia of horses, published in 1909 in the first volume of the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen. Freud met the boy only once: the treatment was conducted by the boy's father, a follower of Freud, and the case is written up from his notes. Freud interprets the phobia as arising from the boy's Oedipal situation (his love for his mother, his hostility toward his father, his fear of castration and his curiosity about birth and the genitals) and argues that anxiety born of repressed longing was displaced onto horses, which stood for the father. As the first analysis of a child, the case is offered as direct confirmation of the theory of infantile sexuality Freud had set out in 1905.
Main ideas
- The treatment was carried out by the boy's father under Freud's guidance; Freud saw the child only once, and the case is reconstructed from the father's notes.
- The horse phobia is traced to the boy's Oedipal situation: love for the mother and hostility toward the father.
- Castration fears and the child's curiosity about birth and the genitals form part of the conflict behind the symptom.
- Anxiety arising from repressed longing is displaced onto horses, which stand in for the father.
- As the first analysis of a child, the case is presented as direct confirmation of the theory of infantile sexuality set out in 1905.
What it shows
- 1908
Sigmund Freud introduced Castration complex
Freud first described the castration complex in 1908, among the sexual theories of children, and the case of Little Hans (1909), whose mother threatened to have his 'widdler' cut off, gave it its first clinical demonstration. In 1923 he tied it to the phallic phase, in which the child knows only one genital.