Little Hans and Freud's Self-Analysis: A Biographical View of Clinical Theory in the Making

Clinical theory is skeptical of individuals’ ability to recognize the presence, severity, and impact of clinical symptoms and pathological traits (Oltmanns & Powers, 2012); however, empirical work has found moderate self-other convergence for reports of pathological traits and for Antagonism-related personality disorder (PD) constructs (i.e., psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism), which are characterized by low insight. Nevertheless, empirical examinations of insight into perceptions of impairment is scant. Thus, the present study sought to examine individuals’ insight regarding pathological traits and related impairment in two samples. In Sample 1, more psychopathic, narcissistic, and Machiavellian individuals reported higher levels of pathological traits and were aware of related impairment. In Sample 2, individuals reported higher levels of pathological traits and, albeit to a lesser degree, more Antagonism-related impairment. Thus, more psychopathic, narcissistic, and Machiavellian individuals possess a reasonable degree of insight into their trait levels and associated impairment.

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Book Review: Clinical Theory

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association ◽

10.1177/00030651050530020401 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 53 (2) ◽

pp. 651-657

Author(s):

Silvia M. V. Bell

Keyword(s):

Clinical Theory

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The Receding Animal: Theorizing Anxiety and Attachment in Psychoanalysis from Freud to Imre Hermann

Science in Context ◽

10.1017/s0269889715000381 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 55-76 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lydia Marinelli ◽

Andreas Mayer

Keyword(s):

Oedipus Complex ◽

Death Instinct ◽

Case Histories ◽

The Core ◽

The Status ◽

Animal Phobias ◽

Indirect Observation ◽

To Come ◽

Wolf Man ◽

Little Hans

ArgumentAnimals played an important role in the formation of psychoanalysis as a theoretical and therapeutic enterprise. They are at the core of texts such as Freud's famous case histories of Little Hans, the Rat Man, or the Wolf Man. The infantile anxiety triggered by animals provided the essential link between the psychology of individual neuroses and the ambivalent status of the “totem” animal in so-called primitive societies in Freud's attempt to construct an anthropological basis for the Oedipus complex in Totem and Taboo. In the following, we attempt to track the status of animals as objects of indirect observation as they appear in Freud's classical texts, and in later revisionist accounts such as Otto Rank's Trauma of Birth and Imre Hermann's work on the clinging instinct. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Freudian conception of patients' animal phobias is substantially revised within Hermann's original psychoanalytic theory of instincts which draws heavily upon ethological observations of primates. Although such a reformulation remains grounded in the idea of “archaic” animal models for human development, it allows to a certain extent to empiricize the speculative elements of Freud's later instinct theory (notably the death instinct) and to come to a more embodied account of psychoanalytic practice.

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