Little Hans

Little Hans

1. Aim

   • To understand and treat the 5-year-old boy's fear of horses

2. Procedure

   • Case study, including dream analysis
   • Information came from Hans' father, not from Hans himself
     • Follower of Freud
   • Freud met Hans twice
   • Study arose from Hans' mother and father documenting his development to test Freud's ideas

3. Description of themes

   • Little Hans had an interest in his 'widdler'
   • Dreamt about widdlers and about wiping childrens bottoms
   • Hans denied this interest and said it was only in his dreams
   • When younger, Hans had played with his widdler and his mother had told him off for it
   • Mother had threatened to cut off Hans' widdler
   • Seemed to want his father to 'go away' on business
   • Family moved house and his father aws away less often - Hans wanted his father dead
   • Hans was jealous of his sister, born when he was 3 and a half.
   • Hans was afraid of falling under the water in the bath
     • When watching his mother bath his sister, he wished she would let her head go under the water
   • Hans was afraid that a white horse would bite him
   • It appeared that he had heard the father of a girl staying with him telling her not to put her finger on the white horse that was drawing the cart
   • Also afraid of black on horses' mouths and things in front of their eyes
   • Had once seen a horse fall down when drawing a bus
   • Hans was playing with dolls and 'having children'
   • His father told him that boys cannot have children, and Hans said that his mother was the childrens mother, Hans was their father and his father was the grandfather

4. Analysis

   • Denying interest in widdlers except in dreams
     • Denial
   • Hans dreamt about wiping children's bottoms because he enjoyed having this done to him
     • Anal stage
   • Wanted father to go away/die
     • Enjoyed being with mother and having her attention
     • Jealousy of sister also shows this
     • When father goes away, sleeps in mothers bed
   • Hans' fear of a white horse
     • Fear of his father
     • Black things represented men with moustaches and glasses
     • Girl told not to put finger on the horse - castration fear
   • Dolls
     • By including his father the Oedipus complex was resolved

5. Conclusion

   • Evidence for psychosexual stages and theory of gender development

6. Evaluation

   • Strenghts
     • Hans talked about his problems, so the data was valid
     • Data was comprehensive, covering dreams, events, ideas and feelings
     • Focus on sexual matters and unconscious processes has lead to psychoanalysis and other psychotherapies being developed
     • Talking cure anda listening cure have been built upon and this is evident in modern day counceling techniques
   • Weaknesses
     • Case study is likely to involve subjective interpretation making it unreliable
     • Parents followed Freud and so may be biased
     • Other explanations such as Bowlby who said that a child needs their mother as an attachment figure in their early years
       • Could be because mother threatened to leave the family
     • Non-scientific methods because concepts are not testable
     • Cannot be repeated so are likely to be unreliable
     • Low generalisability