Freud+-+Period+2

• Psychosexual stage theory: believed that sexual urges were an important determination of a person’s personality • Phallic phase: 3 - 5 years - Oedipus Crisis/Electra Crisis - Penis envy (Competition with dad for mom’s affection) - Castration anxiety (dad’s bigger) - Identification (adult same sex role model) <-- personality
 * Relevant Background Information:**

Personality: • ID - Contains instincts and psychic energy - Exists completely in our unconscious mind - Propelled by the pleasure principle - The principle that the id seeks gratification and fails to distinguish fantasy from reality

• Superego: - Partly in the conscious mind ~ partly in the unconscious - Our sense of right and wrong - Represents the internalizing of our parent’s rules and the rules of society - What we want is not what we should do (Superego and ID conflict: anxiety)

• Ego: - Partly in the conscious mind ~ partly in the unconscious - Driven by the reality principle - The ego is aware if the real environment and the need to fit into it - Takes the superego and ID and balances it out

To treat little Hans, a young boy who was seen as suffering from anxiety and phobias. • Freud uses this case study to support his psychoanalytic ideas.
 * Aim:**

Little Hans
 * Participant Group:**

Case Study
 * Research Method:**

__Evaluation of the method:__ • Pro- useful for therapeutic reasons • con- lack of generalization __Objectivity:__ Were ideas attributed to Little Hans that weren’t his? Freud was aware of this problem but said “Psychoanalysis is not an impartial investigation but a therapeutic measure. Its essence is not to prove anything, but to alter something.”

Little Hans would talk to his father about it and then letters between Little Hans' father and Freud.
 * How was data collected:**

Qualitative
 * What type of data was collected:**

• His father provided Freud with details of conversation with Hans • Freud and the father tried to understand what the boy was experiencing to resolve the phobia of horses. • When Hans was 3 he developed an interest in his widdler (penis) and also those of other people • For example: on one occasion he asked ‘Mummy, have you a widdler too?’ • Throughout this time, the main theme of his fantasies and dreams was widdlers and widdling • When he was about 3 1/2 his mother told him not to touch his widdler or she would call the doctor to come and cut it off. • When he was 3 1/2 his mother had a baby girl, Hannah. He was resentful of the baby. • He developed a phobia of the bath. • Hans later developed a fear of horses • He overheard a father tell his soon ‘Don’t put your finger on the white horse or it will bite you.’ • He saw a horse pulling a carriage fall down and kick about with its legs. • This fear went on to generalize to carts and busses. • Hans reported liking to get in to the bed with his parents (especially mother) • Freud said his libido had longing for the mother. • Throughout the study Hans expressed anxiety that his mother would leave him. (But the mother kept saying how she was going to leave and divorce the husband, etc) • Hans fantasies: - Being the mother of his own children, whom he made widdle - That his mother showed him her widdle - That he had taken a smaller crumpled giraffe away from a taller giraffe. - That the plumber snaked out Hans’ belly. - That the plumber replaced Hans’ behind and his penis with a larger one. - That Hans was the father of his own children with his mother and that his father was their grandfather. - After this last fantasy and the ‘help’ he received from his father and Freud his anxieties and phobias and the psychoanalysis came to an end.
 * Procedure:**

Letters.
 * Special equipment / materials:**


 * Results:**

• Hans feared his mother would abandon him - Freud interpreted this as anxiety as anxiety caused by the sexual arousal of sleeping in his mother’s bed • Fear of bath - death wish for sister • Taking small giraffe from big giraffe - taking mother from father • Fear of heavily loaded cart - Fear of his mother being pregnant • Fear of being bitten by white horse - fear of father (glasses and mustache displaced onto horse black binders and mussel castrating him biting his finger. • Fantasy of plumber providing larger widdler - Identify with his father by being more like him • Fantasy of being father of his mother’s children and his father being their grandfather - Fulfillment of having mother but allowing his father to live
 * Conclusion:**

In-depth look into a person; special relationship between Hans and his father
 * Strengths:**

• Only ONE individual; father was a supporter of Freud’s ideas. • Freud never actually treated Hans. All help was received though his father
 * Weaknesses:**

__Other Theory's given to Hans:__ • Attachment Theory of John Bowlby: Id caregivers are available and responsive t other infant’s needs then the baby knows that the caregiver is dependable which creates a secure base for the child to explore the world • Bowlby believed that most of Hans’ anxiety arose from actual threats by his mother • Classical conditioning is a learning process that occurs through association between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus • Hans witnessed a horse fall in a street. Hans then generalized this fear to all horses. It has also been suggested that his mother was abusive to Hannah and that Hans associated her screams with the noises that horses make when they fall down.

• This theory is difficult to test - Cannot operationalize and measure in any scientific way such concept as DISPLACEMENT; however, this does not PROVE that it is not valid.
 * Ecological Validity:**

Bring Little Hans unconscious into his conscious - mental harm
 * Ethics:**