Little Hans and the “Enigmatic Messages” of His Parents

2020 ◽  
Vol 107 (6) ◽  
pp. 551-581
Author(s):  
Siegfried Zepf ◽  
Judith Zepf

The authors discuss the psychoanalytic treatment of Little Hans, drawing on the perspective offered by Laplanche's concept of “enigmatic messages,” which they believe can contribute to a better understanding of this case history. They conclude that Little Hans's positive Oedipus complex conceals his negative Oedipus complex in which he represents his parents’ oedipal problems in a distorted fashion. They demonstrate the way his parents project aspects of these problems into Hans's psyche, where his subsequent identifications with them lead to substitutive formations. They trace the course of Little Hans's horse phobia and examine his search for substitutive formations that have to align with his parents’ defenses if they are to succeed in securing his safety and their affection.

1999 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter L. Rudnytsky

Freud's case of Little Hans occupies a crucial position in his elaboration of the Oedipus complex. This paper calls into question the universality of Freud's paradigm from the standpoint of race by excavating submerged countertransferential features of the text. A 1942 paper by Max Graf, Little Hans's father, reveals both that Freud gave the boy a birthday gift of a rocking horse and was responsible for the decision to raise him as a Jew (and hence to have him circumcised). Freud's gift bears an obvious connection to Hans's phobia, but he makes no mention of it in his case history. Nor does he disclose that the boy is Jewish; only in a footnote does he touch on the theme of Jewishness when he ascribes anti-Semitism to the castration complex. Freud's effacing of Hans's Jewish identity is an attempt to efface his own, but when Freud calls the Oedipus complex his ‘shibboleth,’ his choice of a Greek hero as the representative of humanity is undercut by the reminder of Jewish difference.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Marinelli ◽  
Andreas Mayer

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.


2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 257-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Stewart

Through the examination of the recurrent sexualised image of horses' posteriors in the act of defecation in , , and this paper outlines a nexus of concepts clustering around this apparently aberrant sexual stimulus. Using Freud's case history of Little Hans and the suggested relationship between defecation and childbirth as an analogue, the paper argues that the image reveals not a horror at sexuality within Beckett's works, but a horror at reproductive sexuality which finds its fullest expression in the sterile world of


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (5) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Carlos Krus Abecasis

The described case history is known since the Xth century, and on a scientific level since the end of XVIIIth. Origin and free evolution of the inlet up to 1800, as well as results obtained by artificial improvement attempts subsequently undertaken, are analysed, in order to investigate the main features of local physiography and the way it reacts to human interventions intended to meet ever-increasing navigation requirements. The remarkable success of the projects undertaken, especially of that being executed, seems to legitimate the inference of some principles of general interest as long as tidal lagoon inlets improvement is concerned. Stress is laid upon difference from principles valid in estuaries’ amelioration.


1968 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erich Fromm ◽  
Narvaez M. Fernando ◽  
Fernando Narváez
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. S. Emam ◽  
P. R. Brand ◽  
O. R. Gabaldon ◽  
M. Vityk ◽  
A. El Leithy ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 166 ◽  
pp. 81-98
Author(s):  
Izabella Malej

The game of desires. Freud about DostoevskyThe feature S. Freud, the father of psychoanalyses, has in common with Dostoevsky is the fascination with the puzzle of human being they both tried to solve by the means of the reflection over human emotions. Freud carried out the psychological analysis of Dostoevsky’s life and work in his essay Dostoevsky and parricide 1928 where he came up with his hypothesis of Dostoevsky’s impulsive character both as a man and as a writer. The way of thinking of Austrian psychiatrist starts from Dostoevsky’s works in connection to the writer’s biography, and, particularly to numerous “shocking” events in his life the murder of his father by peasants and in this context the fact that Dostoevsky wished his father dead, the rape of a minor, allegedly commited by Dostoevsky, his passionate relationships with women, his gambling addiction. Finally Freud comes to the diagnosis — Oedipus complex. The impulse of the id, which, in Freud’s opinion, Dostoevsky was never able to tame, is the key to the puzzle of Dostoevsky’s soul. Alternately suppressed and fulfilled, not always successfully, his lust drives the author of The Adolescent towards his neurosis, the symptoms of which were his epilepsy attacks. However, according to Freud, Dostoevsky suffered not as much from epilepsy as from hysteria underlay by defective mechanism of suppression of fear. Fear of death and sexual desire are essential in this process. And the gambling addiction, according to Freud’s hypothesis, is the aftermath of Dostoevsky’s subconscious expectation of the punishment for his sins real or imaginary. Игра влечений. Фрейд о ДостоевскомОтца психоанализа, З. Фрейда, тесно связывает с Ф. Достоевским увлечение загадкой человека, которую оба пытались расшифровать путем раздумий над человеческими эмоциями. Фрейд провел психологический анализ жизни и творчества великого русского писателя в эссе Достоевский и отцеубийство 1928, в котором поставил гипотезу об инстинктивной природе Достоевского как человека и писателя. Ход мысли австрийского психиатра об авторе Бесов идет от творчества и через корреляцию с биографией писателя, особенно с имеющимися в ней «потрясающими» событиями убийство отца крестьянами и  связанное с этим желание Достоевского смерти отцу; изнасилование несовершеннолетней, вменяемое в вину писателю; бурные романы с женщинами; зависимость от азартных игр, приводит к постановке диагнозa, в основе которого лежит эдипов комплекс. Влечение id, обуздать которое Достоевскому никогда не удалось, является ключом к  разгадке души писателя. Вожделение, попеременно и не всегда успешно вытесняемое и  реализованное автором Подростка, приводит его к  неврозу, симптомами которого были приступы эпилепсии. Вместе с тем, как предполагает Фрейд, писатель страдал не столько от эпилепсии, сколько от истерии, вызванной неправильным механизмом избавления от влечений. Боязнь смерти и сексуальное влечение играют в этом процессе ведущую роль. В свою очередь, зависимость от азартных игр является, согласно Фрейду, наследием подсознательного ожидания Достоевским наказания за грехи совершенные или мнимые.


Author(s):  
Kevin Birmingham

This article examines Judge John Woolsey’s famous 1933 U.S. District Court decision declaring Ulysses not obscene, a ruling that legalized the novel’s importation into the U.S. and paved the way for Random House’s 1934 edition. “U.S. v. One Book Called ‘Ulysses’” was the third (and most important) in a trio of obscenity cases that Woolsey decided in the early 1930s, and in all three cases he heard arguments from ACLU lawyer Morris Ernst. A deeper understanding of Woolsey’s decision and its importance must restore its larger contexts, and this essay considers the decision’s unusual features—its sparse use of case history, its rhetorical flourishes, its outsize stature—through a detailed consideration of Judge Woolsey himself. Several unexamined documents (in archives and in private hands) help clarify our heretofore hazy picture of Woolsey, and a clearer image suggests that Woolsey’s decision relies not upon the standard authority of case law but upon what we might call prestige. What makes Judge Woolsey’s literary bent both compelling and “dangerous” (in the words of Judge Learned Hand) is that a decision like U.S. v. Ulysses highlights the resemblance between the prestige of literature and the authority of the law.


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