Freud - Complete Works (346 page)

  
²
Two other boys were reported to me as
having made the same judgement, expressed in identical words and
followed by the same anticipation, when they were allowed to
satisfy their curiosity and look at their baby sister’s body
for the first time. One might well feel horrified at such signs of
the premature decay of a child’s intellect. Why was it that
these young enquirers did not report what they really saw - namely,
that there was no widdler there? In little Hans’s case, at
all events, we can account completely for the faulty perception. We
are aware that by a process of careful induction he had arrived at
the general proposition that every animate object, in
contradistinction to inanimate ones, possesses a widdler. His
mother had confirmed him in this conviction by giving him
corroborative information in regard to persons inaccessible to his
own observation. He was now utterly incapable of surrendering what
he had achieved merely on the strength of this single observation
made upon his little sister. He therefore made a judgement that in
that instance also there was a widdler present, only that it was
still very small, but that it would grow till it was as big as a
horse’s.

   We
can go a step further in vindicating little Hans’s honour. As
a matter of fact, he was behaving no worse than a philosopher of
the school of Wundt. In the view of that school, consciousness is
the invariable characteristic of what is mental, just as in the
view of little Hans a widdler is the indispensable criterion of
what is animate. If now the philosopher comes across mental
processes whose existence cannot but be inferred, but about which
there is not a trace of consciousness to be detected - for the
subject, in fact, knows nothing of them, although it is impossible
to avoid inferring their existence - then, instead of saying that
they are
un
conscious mental processes, he calls them
semi
-conscious. The widdler’s still very small! And in
this comparison the advantage is in favour of little Hans. For, as
is so often the case with the sexual researches of children, behind
the mistake a piece of genuine knowledge lies concealed. Little
girls
do
possess a small widdler, which we call a clitoris,
though it does not grow any larger but remains permanently stunted.
Compare my short paper on ‘The Sexual Theories of
Children’ (1908
c
).

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2008

   ‘At the same age (when he
was three and three-quarters) Hans produced his first account of a
dream: "To-day when I was asleep I thought I was at Gmunden
with Mariedl."

   ‘Mariedl was the
thirteen-year-old daughter of our landlord and used often to play
with him.’

   As Hans’s father was
telling his mother the dream in his presence, he corrected him,
saying: ‘Not with Mariedl, but quite alone with
Mariedl.’

   In this connection we learn:
‘In the summer of 1906 Hans was at Gmunden, and used to run
about all day long with our landlord’s children. When we left
Gmunden we thought he would be very much upset by having to come
away and move back to town. To our surprise this was not so. He
seemed glad of the change, and for several weeks he talked very
little about Gmunden. It was not until after some weeks had passed
that there began to emerge reminiscences - often vividly coloured -
of the time he had spent at Gmunden. During the last four weeks or
so he has been working these reminiscences up into phantasies. He
imagines that he is playing with the other children, with Berta,
Olga, and Fritzl; he talks to them as though they were really with
him, and he is capable of amusing himself in this way for hours at
a time. Now that he has got a sister and is obviously taken up with
the problem of the origin of children, he always calls Berta and
Olga "his children"; and once he added: "my children
Berta and Olga were brought by the stork too." The dream,
occurring now, after six months’ absence from Gmunden, is
evidently to be read as an expression of a longing to go back
there.’

   Thus far his father. I will
anticipate what is to come by adding that when Hans made this last
remark about his children having been brought by the stork, he was
contradicting aloud a doubt that was lurking within him.

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2009

   His father luckily made a note of
many things which turned out later on to be of unexpected value.
‘I drew a giraffe for Hans, who has been to Schönbrunn
several times lately. He said to me: "Draw its widdler
too." "Draw it yourself," I answered; whereupon he
added this line to my picture (see Fig. 1). He began by drawing a
short stroke, and then added a bit on to it, remarking: "Its
widdler’s longer."

Fig 1.

   ‘Hans and I walked past a
horse that was micturating, and he said: "The horse has got
its widdler underneath like me."

   ‘He was watching his
three-months-old sister being given a bath, and said in pitying
tones: "She
has
got a tiny little widdler."

   ‘He was given a doll to
play with and undressed it. He examined it carefully and said:
"Her widdler’s ever so tiny."'

   As we already know, this formula
made it possible for him to go on believing in his discovery
(see 
p. 2005
).

   Every investigator runs the risk
of falling into an occasional error. It is some consolation for him
if, like little Hans in the next example, he does not err alone but
can quote a common linguistic usage in his support. For Hans saw a
monkey in his picture-book one day, and pointing to its up-curled
tail, said: ‘Daddy, look at its widdler!’

   His interest in widdlers led him
to invent a special game of his own. ‘Leading out of the
front hall there is a lavatory and also a dark storeroom for
keeping wood in. For some time past Hans has been going into this
wood-cupboard and saying: "I’m going to my W.C." I
once looked in to see what he was doing in the dark storeroom. He
showed me his parts and said: "I’m widdling." That
is to say, he has been "playing" at W.C. That it is in
the nature of a game is shown not merely by the fact that he was
only pretending to widdle, but also by the fact that he does not go
into the W.C., which would after all be far simpler, but prefers
the wood-cupboard and calls it "his W.C."'

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2010

   We should be doing Hans an
injustice if we were to trace only the auto-erotic features of his
sexual life. His father has detailed information to give us on the
subject of his love relationships with other children. From these
we can discern the existence of an ‘object-choice’ just
as in the case of an adult; and also, it must be confessed, a very
striking degree of inconstancy and a disposition to polygamy.

   ‘In the winter (at the age
of three and three-quarters) I took Hans to the skating rink and
introduced him to my friend N.’s two little daughters, who
were about ten years old. Hans sat down beside them, while they, in
the consciousness of their mature age, looked down on the little
urchin with a good deal of contempt; he gazed at them with
admiration, though this proceeding made no great impression on
them. In spite of this Hans always spoke of them afterwards as
"my little girls". "Where are my little girls? When
are my little girls coming?" And for some weeks he kept
tormenting me with the question: "When am I going to the rink
again to see my little girls?"

   A five-year-old boy cousin came
to visit Hans, who had by then reached the age of four. Hans was
constantly putting his arms round him, and once, as he was giving
him one of these tender embraces, said: ‘I
am
so fond
of you.’

   This is the first trace of
homosexuality that we have come across in him, but it will not be
the last. Little Hans seems to be a positive paragon of all the
vices.

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2011

   ‘When Hans was four years
old we moved into a new flat. A door led out of the kitchen on to a
balcony, from which one could see into a flat on the opposite side
of the courtyard. In this flat Hans discovered a little girl of
about seven or eight. He would sit on the step leading on to the
balcony so as to admire her, and would stop there for hours on end.
At four o’clock in the afternoon in particular, when the
little girl came home from school, he was not to be kept in the
room, and nothing could induce him to abandon his post of
observation. Once, when the little girl failed to make her
appearance at the window at her usual hour, Hans grew quite
restless, and kept pestering the servants with questions.
"When’s the little girl coming? Where’s the little
girl?" and so on. When she did appear at last, he was quite
blissful and never took his eyes off the flat opposite. The
violence with which this "long-range love"¹ came
over him is to be explained by his having no playmates of either
sex. Spending a good deal of time with other children clearly forms
part of a child’s normal development.

   ‘Hans obtained some
companionship of this kind when, shortly afterwards (he was by then
four and a half), we moved to Gmunden for the summer holidays. In
our house there his playmates were our landlord’s children:
Franzl (about twelve years old), Fritzl (eight), Olga (seven), and
Berta (five). Besides these there were the neighbour’s
children, Anna (ten), and two other little girls of nine and seven
whose names I have forgotten. Hans’s favourite was Fritzl; he
often hugged him and made protestations of his love. Once when he
was asked: ‘"Which of the girls are you fondest
of?" he answered: "Fritzl!" At the same time he
treated the girls in a most aggressive, masculine and arrogant way,
embracing them and kissing them heartily - a process to which Berta
in particular offered no objection. When Berta was coming out of
the room one evening he put his arms round her neck and said in the
fondest tones: "Berta, you
are
a dear!" This, by
the way, did not prevent his kissing the others as well and
assuring them of his love. He was fond, too, of the
fourteen-year-old Mariedl - another of our landlord’s
daughters - who used to play with him. One evening as he was being
put to bed he said: "I want Mariedl to sleep with me." On
being told that would not do, he said: "Then she shall sleep
with Mummy or with Daddy." He was told that would not do
either, but that Mariedl must sleep with her own father and mother.
Upon which the following dialogue took place:

   ‘
Hans
: "Oh,
then I’II just go downstairs and sleep with
Mariedl."

   ‘
Mother
: "You
really want to go away from Mummy and sleep downstairs?"

   ‘
Hans
: "Oh,
I’II come up again in the morning to have breakfast and do
number one."

   ‘
Mother
:
"Well, if you really want to go away from Daddy and Mummy,
then take your coat and knickers - and good-bye!"

   ‘Hans did in fact take his
clothes and go towards the staircase, to go and sleep with Mariedl,
but, it need hardly be said, he was fetched back.

   ‘(Behind his wish, "I
want Mariedl to sleep with us," there of course lay another
one: "I want Mariedl" (with whom he liked to be so much)
"to become one of our family." But Hans’s father
and mother were in the habit of taking him into their bed, though
only occasionally, and there can be no doubt that lying beside them
had aroused erotic feelings in him; so that his wish to sleep with
Mariedl had an erotic sense as well. Lying in bed with his father
or mother was a source of erotic feelings in Hans just as it is in
every other child.’

   In spite of his accesses of
homosexuality, little Hans bore himself like a true man in the face
of his mother’s challenge.

  
¹
  Und die Liebe per
Distanz,

      Kurzgesagt,
missfällt mir ganz.

                           
WILHELM BUSCH

  
[Long-range love, I must admit, Does not suit my taste a
bit.]

Analysis Of A Phobia In A Five-Year-Old Boy

2012

   ‘In the next instance, too,
Hans said to his mother: "I say, I
should
so like to
sleep with the little girl." This episode has given us a great
deal of entertainment, for Hans has really behaved like a grown-up
person in love. For the past few days a pretty little girl of about
eight has been coming to the restaurant where we have lunch. Of
course Hans fell in love with her on the spot. He keeps constantly
turning round in his chair to take furtive looks at her; when he
has finished eating, he stations himself in her vicinity so as to
flirt with her, but if he finds he is being observed, he blushes
scarlet. If his glances are returned by the little girl, he at once
looks shamefacedly the other way. His behaviour is naturally a
great joy to every one lunching at the restaurant. Every day as he
is taken there he says: "Do you think the little girl will be
there to-day?" And when at last she appears, he goes quite
red, just as a grown-up person would in such a case. One day he
came to me with a beaming face and whispered in my ear:
"Daddy, I know where the little girl lives. I saw her going up
the steps in such-and-such a place." Whereas he treats the
little girls at home aggressively, in this other affair he appears
in the part of a platonic and languishing admirer. Perhaps this has
to do with the little girls at home being village children, while
the other is a young lady of refinement. As I have already
mentioned, he once said he would like to sleep with her.