Little Hans
Beatrice Smith
PSYCH/504
September 07, 2015
Kathleen Bernhard, PH.D.
Phobias are something that people are scared of for no reason at all or something that happened to them in their lifetime. Some people are scared of animals, heights, animated objects, and small or cramped spaces. Sigmund Freud did a case study on Little Hans and became to understand him in his own views of psychology. It was advised that Sigmund Freud had only seen Little Hans once, but treated him through correspondence with Little Hans’s father. As the treatment went on Freud treated Hans in relation with his sexuality theories and the Oedipus complex theory. Sigmund Freud also related Hans’s issues with his unconscious mind theories. Freud suggests that the unconscious mind helps people deal with reality problems that they cannot face when they are conscious. He believes that children face all kinds of conflicts and emotions in their lives and if they are not faced when they are young then they can affect them their whole lives.
Little Hans had a phobia of horses and it seemed to come on unexpectedly. Hans’s father wanted to find a solution and the problem behind Little Hans’s fears. Little Hans’s father started corresponding with Freud in hopes that there would be a solution and treatment that he could suggest (Cervone & Pervin, 2010). Little Hans had seen a horse die, but also had seen the horses’ genital area and his father had suggested that these reasons could be the problem. Hans’s father thought because of seeing a horse’s penis was the cause of Hans’s fears. Freud thought it was something else and needed more information to suggest treatment.
Freud felt that to fully understand the reasoning behind Hans’s phobia and the reasons involved there needed to be an explicit analysis performed with what knowledge was available at that time. Freud that it was interesting to find that Hans seemed to be interested in his own sexual...