Freud - Complete Works (347 page)

   ‘Not wanting Hans to be
left in the overwrought state to which he had been brought by his
passion for the little girl, I managed to make them acquainted, and
invited the little girl to come and see him in the garden after he
had finished his afternoon sleep. Hans was so much excited at the
prospect of the little girl coming, that for the first time he
could not get off to sleep in the afternoon, but tossed about
restlessly on his bed. When his mother asked, "Why
aren’t you asleep? Are you thinking about the little
girl?" he said "Yes" with a happy look. And when he
came home from the restaurant he said to every one in the house:
"I say, my little girl’s coming to see me to-day."
The fourteen-year-old Mariedl reported that he had repeatedly kept
asking her: "I say, do you think she’ll be nice to me?
Do you think she’ll kiss me if I kiss her?" and so
on.

   ‘But in the afternoon it
rained, so that the visit did not come off, and Hans consoled
himself with Berta and Olga.’

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

2013

   Other observations, also made at
the time of the summer holidays, suggest that all sorts of new
developments were going on in the little boy.

   ‘Hans, four and a quarter.
This morning Hans was given his usual daily bath by his mother and
afterwards dried and powdered. As his mother was powdering round
his penis and taking care not to touch it, Hans said: "Why
don’t you put your finger there?"

   ‘
Mother
:
"Because that’d be piggish."

   ‘
Hans
:
"What’s that? Piggish? Why?"

   ‘
Mother
:
"Because it’s not proper."

   ‘
Hans
(laughing):
"But it’s great fun."¹

   At about the same period Hans had
a dream which was in striking contrast with the boldness he had
shown towards his mother. It was the first dream of his that was
made unrecognizable by distortion. His father’s penetration,
however, succeeded in clearing it up.

   ‘Hans, four and a quarter.
Dream
. This morning Hans woke up and said: "I say, last
night I thought:
Some one said: ‘Who wants to come to
me?’ Then some one said: ‘I do.’ Then he had to
make him widdle
."

  
¹
Another mother, a neurotic, who was
unwilling to believe in infantile masturbation, told me of a
similar attempt at seduction on the part of her
three-and-a-half-year-old daughter. She had had a pair of drawers
made for the little girl, and was trying them on her to see whether
they were not too tight for walking. To do this she passed her hand
upwards along the inner surface of the child’s thigh.
Suddenly the little girl shut her legs together on her
mother’s hand, saying: ‘Oh, Mummy,
do
leave your
hand there. It feels so lovely.’

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

2014

   ‘Further questions made it
clear that there was no visual content whatever in this dream, and
that it was of the purely auditory type. During the last few days
Hans has been playing parlour games and "forfeits" with
our landlord’s children, amongst whom are his friends Olga
(aged seven) and Berta (aged five). (The game of forfeits is played
in this way:
A
: "Whose is this forfeit in my
hand?"
B
: "Mine." Then it is decided what
B
must do.) The dream was modelled on this game; only what
Hans wished was that the person to whom the forfeit belonged should
be condemned, not to give the usual kiss or be given the usual box
on the ear, but to widdle, or rather to be made to widdle by
someone.

   ‘I got him to tell me the
dream again. He told it in the same words, except that instead of
"then some one said" this time he said "then she
said". This "she" is obviously Berta or Olga, one of
the girls he had been playing with. Translated, the dream ran as
follows: "I was playing forfeits with the little girls. I
asked: ‘Who wants to come to me?’ She (Berta or Olga)
replied: ‘I do.’ Then she had to make me widdle."
(That is, she had to assist him in micturating, which is evidently
agreeable for Hans.)

   ‘It is clear that being
made to widdle - having his knickers unbuttoned and his penis taken
out - is a pleasurable process for Hans. On walks it is mostly his
father who assists Hans in this way; and this gives the child an
opportunity for the fixation of homosexual inclinations upon
him.

   ‘Two days ago, as I have
already reported, while his mother was washing and powdering his
genital region, he asked her: "Why don’t you put your
finger there?" Yesterday, when I was helping Hans to do number
one, he asked me for the first time to take him to the back of the
house so that no one should see him. He added: "Last year when
I widdled, Berta and Olga watched me." This meant, I think,
that last year he had enjoyed being watched by the girls, but that
this was no longer so. His exhibitionism has now succumbed to
repression. The fact that the wish that Berta and Olga should watch
him widdling (or make him widdle) is now repressed in real life is
the explanation of its appearance in the dream, where it was neatly
disguised under the game of forfeits. - I have repeatedly observed
since then that he does not like to be seen widdling.’

   I will only add that this dream
obeys the rule I have given in
The Interpretation of Dreams
,
to the effect that speeches occurring in dreams are derived from
speeches heard or spoken by the dreamer during the preceding
days.

   Hans’s father has noted
down one other observation, dating from the period immediately
after their return to Vienna: ‘Hans (aged four and a half)
was again watching his little sister being given her bath, when he
began laughing. On being asked why he was laughing, he replied:
"I’m laughing at Hanna’s widdler."
"Why?" "Because her widdler’s so
lovely."

   ‘Of course his answer was a
disingenuous one. In reality her widdler had seemed to him
funny
. Moreover, this is the first time he has recognized in
this way the distinction between male and female genitals instead
of denying it.’

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

2015

II

CASE
HISTORY AND ANALYSIS

My dear Professor, I am sending you a little
more about Hans - but this time, I am sorry to say, material for a
case history. As you will see, during the last few days he has
developed a nervous disorder, which has made my wife and me most
uneasy, because we have not been able to find any means of
dissipating it. I shall venture to call upon you
tomorrow, . . . but in the
meantime . . . I enclose a written record of the
material available.

   ‘No doubt the ground was
prepared by sexual over-excitation due to his mother’s
tenderness; but I am not able to specify the actual exciting cause.
He is afraid
a horse will bite him in the street
, and this
fear seems somehow to be connected with his having been frightened
by a large penis. As you know from a former report, he had noticed
at a very early age what large penises horses have, and at that
time he inferred that as his mother was so large she must have a
widdler like a horse.

   ‘I cannot see what to make
of it. Has he seen an exhibitionist somewhere? Or is the whole
thing simply connected with his mother? It is not very pleasant for
us that he should begin setting us problems so early. Apart from
his being afraid of going into the street and from his being in low
spirits in the evening, he is in other respects the same Hans, as
bright and cheerful as ever.’

   We will not follow Hans’s
father either in his easily comprehensible anxieties or in his
first attempts at finding an explanation; we will begin by
examining the material before us. It is not in the least our
business to ‘understand’ a case at once: this is only
possible at a later stage, when we have received enough impressions
of it. For the present we will suspend our judgement and give our
impartial attention to everything that there is to observe.

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

2016

   The earliest accounts, dating
from the first days in January of the present year (1908), run as
follows:

   ‘Hans (aged four and
three-quarters) woke up one morning in tears. Asked why he was
crying, he said to his mother: "When I was asleep I thought
you were gone and I had no Mummy to coax with."¹

   ‘An anxiety dream,
therefore.

   ‘I had already noticed
something similar at Gmunden in the summer. When he was in bed in
the evening he was usually in a very sentimental state. Once he
made a remark to this effect: "Suppose I was to have no
Mummy", or "Suppose you were to go away", or
something of the sort; I cannot remember the exact words.
Unfortunately, when he got into an elegiac mood of that kind, his
mother used always to take him into bed with her.

   ‘On about January 5th he
came into his mother’s bed in the morning, and said: "Do
you know what Aunt M. said? She said: ‘He
has
got a
dear little thingummy.’"² (Aunt M. was stopping
with us four weeks ago. Once while she was watching my wife giving
the boy a bath she did in fact say these words to her in a low
voice. Hans had overheard them and was now trying to put them to
his own uses.)

   ‘On January 7th he went to
the Stadtpark with his nurse maid as usual. In the street he began
to cry and asked to be taken home, saying that he wanted to
"coax" with his Mummy. At home he was asked why he had
refused to go any farther and had cried, but he would not say. Till
the evening he was cheerful, as usual. But in the evening he grew
visibly frightened; he cried and could not be separated from his
mother, and wanted to "coax" with her again. Then he grew
cheerful again, and slept well.

  
¹
‘Hans’ expression for "to
caress".’

  
²
Meaning his penis. It is one of the
commonest things - psycho-analyses are full of such incidents - for
children’s genitals to be caressed, not only in word but in
deed, by fond relatives, including even parents
themselves.

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

2017

   ‘On January 8th my wife
decided to go out with him herself, so as to see what was wrong
with him. They went to Schönbrunn, where he always likes
going. Again he began to cry, did not want to start, and was
frightened. In the end he did go; but was visibly frightened in the
street. On the way back from Schönbrunn he said to his mother,
after much internal struggling: "
I was afraid a horse would
bite me
." (He had, in fact, become uneasy at
Schönbrunn when he saw a horse.) In the evening he seems to
have had another attack similar to that of the previous evening,
and to have wanted to be "coaxed" with. He was calmed
down. He said, crying: "I know I shall have to go for a walk
again to-morrow." And later: "The horse’ll come
into the room."

   ‘On the same day his mother
asked: "Do you put your hand to your widdler?" and he
answered: "Yes. Every evening, when I’m in bed."
The next day, January 9th, he was warned, before his afternoon
sleep, not to put his hand to his widdler. When he woke up he was
asked about it, and said he had put it there for a short while all
the same.’

   Here, then, we have the beginning
of Hans’s anxiety as well as of his phobia. As we see, there
is good reason for keeping the two separate. Moreover, the material
seems to be amply sufficient for giving us our bearings; and no
moment of time is so favourable for the understanding of a case as
its initial stage, such as we have here, though unluckily that
stage is as a rule neglected or passed over in silence. The
disorder set in with thoughts that were at the same time fearful
and tender, and then followed an anxiety dream on the subject of
losing his mother and so not being able to coax with her any more.
His affection for his mother must therefore have become enormously
intensified. This was the fundamental phenomenon in his condition.
In support of this, we may, recall his two attempts at seducing his
mother, the first of which dated back to the summer, while the
second (a simple commendation of his penis) occurred immediately
before the outbreak of his street-anxiety. It was this increased
affection for his mother which turned suddenly into anxiety -
which, as we should say, succumbed to repression. We do not yet
know from what quarter the impetus towards repression may have
come. Perhaps it was merely the result of the intensity of the
child’s emotions, which had become greater than he could
control; or perhaps other forces which we have not yet recognized
were also at work. This we shall learn as we go on. Hans’s
anxiety, which thus corresponded to a repressed erotic longing,
was, like every infantile anxiety, without an object to begin with:
it was still anxiety and not yet fear. The child cannot tell what
he is afraid of; and when Hans, on the first walk with the
nursemaid, would not say what he was afraid of, it was simply that
he himself did not yet know. He said all that he knew, which was
that in the street he missed his mother, whom he could coax with,
and that he did not want to be away from her. In saying this he
quite straightforwardly confessed the primary meaning of his
dislike of streets.

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

2018

   Then again, there were the states
into which he fell on two consecutive evenings before going to
sleep, and which were characterized by anxiety mingled with clear
traces of tenderness. These states show that at the beginning of
his illness there was as yet no phobia whatever present, whether of
streets or of walking or even of horses. If there had been, his
evening states would be inexplicable; for who bothers at bed time
about streets and walking? On the other hand it becomes quite clear
why he was so fearful in the evening, if we suppose that at bedtime
he was overwhelmed by an intensification of his libido - for its
object was his mother, and its aim may perhaps have been to sleep
with her. He had besides learnt from his experience that
at
Gmunden
his mother could be prevailed upon, when he got into
such moods, to take him into her bed, and he wanted to gain the
same ends here in Vienna. Nor must we forget that for part of the
time at Gmunden he had been alone with his mother, as his father
had not been able to spend the whole of the holidays there, and
further, that in the country his affections had been divided among
a number of playmates and friends of both sexes, while in Vienna he
had none, so that his libido was in a position to return undivided
to his mother.