���Ken Steele writes: >Here is the next to last paragraph of Watson & Rayner
>"The Freudians twenty years from now, unless their hypotheses change, >when they come to analyze Albert's fear of a seal skin coat - assuming >that he comes to analysis at that age - will probably tease from him the >recital of a dream which upon their analysis will show that Albert at >three years of age attempted to play with the pubic hair of the mother >and was scolded violently for it. (We are by no means denying that this >might in some other case condition it). If the analyst has sufficiently >prepared Albert to accept such a dream when found as an explanation >of his avoiding tendencies, and if the analyst has the authority and >personality to put it over, Albert may be fully convinced that the dream >was a true revealer of the factors which brought about the fear." That would a considerable advance on the reality of the "Little Hans" analysis! (Actually undertaken by the boy's father under the guidance of Freud.) The little boy had developed a fear of going out in the street, and a fear of a horse biting him, after witnessing a bus-horse fall in the street in front of him. Straightforward enough, one might think, but that would be underestimating the imaginative feats of Sigmund "Sherlock" Freud. The analysis reveals that the fear all stemmed from the fact that "Hans really was a little Oedipus who wanted to get his father 'out of the way', to get rid of him, so he might be alone with his beautiful mother and sleep with her." Freud acknowledges that "Hans deeply loved [his] father", but nevertheless he harboured "death wishes" against him – revealed, of course, by the analysis. You see, "Behind the fear to which Hans first gave expression, the fear of a horse biting him, we have discovered a more deeply seated fear, the fear of horses falling down; and both kinds of horses, the biting horse and the falling horse, had been shown to represent his father, who was going to punish him for the evil wishes he was nourishing against him." Freud tells us that during the single short "consultation" he had with the boy (with the father present), he "disclosed to him that he was afraid of his father because he was so fond of his mother…" But that was only a small part of what the boy was told by the father on behalf of Freud, who acknowledges: "It is true that during the analysis Hans had to be told many things he could not say himself, and he had to be presented with thoughts which he had so far shown no signs of possessing…" In a candid moment not in evidence in his popular works he now writes: "This detracts from the evidential value of the analysis; but the procedure is the same in every case. For a psychoanalysis is not an impartial scientific investigation, but a therapeutic measure… In a psychoanalysis the physician always gives his patient (sometimes to a greater and sometimes to a lesser extent) the conscious anticipatory ideas by means of which he is put in a position to recognize and to grasp the unconscious material." The mystery here is not the origins of the boy's phobia, but that for several generations analysts and admirers of Freud could ever have taken this case history seriously. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
