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.
