weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Wimpy Math Grad Student) (07/05/86)
In article <507@gargoyle.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes: > Freud was notoriously sensitive to disagreements from >those who had previously accepted his views, Jung and Adler being >famous instances. This betrays only the fact that Freud was a human >being with hang-ups like the rest of us, a fact of which he was well >aware; it does not betray any serious lack of understanding of how >science works. I earlier replied, "I disagree". Here goes. First off, it betrays, in my view, that Freud was a human being with a hang-up that he was doing science, and that he was notoriously sensitive to any equally mishmashy theorizing being done since such would expose the hollowness of his own efforts. This was all unconscious, of course. Isn't it a shame that he refused to ever let himself get psychoanalyzed? Then he would have been happy. Then he would have been free. To support my claim, I will look at Freud's famous study of Little Hans, from his "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy" (1909). My copy is in the Collier Books edition _The Sexual Enlightenment of Children_. The case involves Little Hans, both of whose parents were strong devotees of Freud, determined to raise their child according to correct Freudian principles. Freud himself had only met the child only once at the time of the study. Freud claims that the father's contribution was important: The special knowledge by means of which he was able to interpret the remarks made by his five-year-old son was indispensable .... [p47] We'll soon see just how indispensable the father's "interpretations" were. Obviously, direct observation of little children and their sexual impulses is superior to his inferred conclusions about his adult patients' child- hoods. So this case is rather crucial as an example of Freud's thinking, as Freud himself acknowledges. Little Hans's parents made sure he had the proper traumas and complexes: Meanwhile his interest in widdlers [==Wiwimacher] was by no means a purely theoretical one; as might have been ex- pected, it impelled him to touch his member. When he was three and a half his mother found him with his hand to his penis. She threatened him with these words: "If you do that, I shall send for Dr A to cut off your widdler. And then what'll you widdle with?" "With my bottom." He made this reply without having any sense of guilt as yet. But this was the occasion of his acquiring the "cas- tration complex," the presense of which we are so often obliged to infer in analysing neurotics, though they one and all struggle violently against recognizing it. [pp49-50] So first these indoctrinated parents *give* the child his "castration complex", and Freud claims this as evidence for his theories? And don't forget, the proof of the adult's neurosis is his refusal to recognize in the first place his fear of castration. There's a footnote here added in 1923: Any one who, in analysing adults, has been convinced of the invariable presence of the castration complex, will of course find difficulty in ascribing its origin to a chance threat-- of a kind, which is not, after all, of such universal occur- rence; he will be driven to assume that the child constructs this danger for itself out of the slightest hints, which will never be wanting. This circumstance is also the motive, in- deed, that has stimulated the search for those deeper roots of the complex which are universally forthcoming. But this makes it all the more valuable that in the case of little Hans the threat of castration is reported by his parents themselves, and moreover at a date before there was any ques- tion of his phobia. [p50n] So here Freud tries to get it both ways. The particular example doesn't count as support for his theories, of course, but he counts it so anyway. At about the same age [at the zoo], little Hans called out in a joyful and excited voice: "I saw the lion's widdler." Animals owe a good deal of their importance in myths and fairy tales to the openness with which they display their genitals and their sexual functions to the inquisitive little human child. There can be no doubt as the ex- istence of Hans's sexual curiosity .... [pp50-1] Nor is there any doubt as to who put it there. "A dog and a horse have widdlers; a table and a chair haven't." He had thus got hold of an essential charac- teristic for differentiating between animate and inam- inate objects. [p51] Actually, this latter is news to me. An important clue to his later phobia is the following which he once said to his mother: I thought you were so big you'd have a widdler like a horse. [p51] And another dark side of Little Hans is revealed: 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 around 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. [p57] It is fortunate for Freud that the natural polymorphous perversity of children is so easy to reveal in the hands of an expert. Let's move on. Little Hans is now four and a half years old, staying an Gmunden for the summer holiday. Little Hans was particularly fond of Mariedl, one of the landlord's daughters: I want Mariedl to sleep with me. [p58] Upon being told this is impossible, he wanted Mariedl to sleep with his parents. Little Hans's father interprets this for us: Behind his wish, "I want Mariedl to sleep with us," there 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. Ly- ing in bed with father or mother was a source of er- otic feeling in Hans just as it is in every other child. [p59] If this weren't science, I'd call it child pornography. And then, something went >snap< in Little Hans's little mind: No doubt the ground was prepared by sexual overex- citation due to his mother's tenderness; but I am afraid I am not able to specify the actual exciting cause. He is afraid *that a horse will bite him in the street*, and this fear seems somehow to be con- nected with his having been frightened by a large penis. As you know from a former report, he had no- ticed 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. [p63] The earliest accounts of something wrong were when, at the age of four and three-quarters, he woke up crying: "When I was asleep I thought you were gone and I had no Mummy to coax [==caress] with." [p64] And so on for a few days, until he finally admitted what was bothering him about all the horses outside. So his mother sought to get to the underlying root of his fears posthaste: "Did you put your hand to your widdler?" [p65] Obviously, without her keen insight into Freudian theory, this revela- tion of the psychosexual basis of little Hans's phobia would never have been revealed until he was much much older, and only assuming that he was properly psychoanalyzed. Science is so lucky sometimes. Freud analyzes the actual formation of the phobia: His morbid anxiety, then, corresponded to repressed longing. ... The anxiety remains even when the long- ing can be satisfied. It can no longer be completely retransformed into libido; there is something that keeps the libido back under repression. This was shown to be so in the case of Hans on the occasion of his next walk, when his mother went with him. He was with his mother, and yet he still suffered from anxiety--that is to say, from an unsatisfied longing for her. It is true tha the anxiety was less; for he did not allow himself to be induced to go for the walk, whereas he had obliged the nursemaid to turn back. Nor is a street quite the right place for "coaxing", or whatever else this young lover may have wanted. But his anxiety had stood the test; and the next thing for it to do was to find an ob- ject. It was on this walk that he first expressed a fear that a horse would bite him. ... We might thus be led to think that the horse was merely a substitute for his mother. [pp67-8] Let's watch how objectively Little Hans's father drags out the boy's manifold perversions: "Did you see what Berta's widdler looked like?" "No, but I saw the horses'; because I was always in the stables, and so I saw the horses' widdlers." "And so you were curious and wanted to know what Berta's and Mummy's widdlers looked like?" "Yes." [p100] "And when [Berta] widdled, did you look on?" "She used to go the WC." "And you were curious?" "I was inside the WC when she was in it." "Did you tell her you wanted to go in?" [p100] "And you were curious too. Only about Berta?" "About Berta, and about Olga." "About who else?" "About no one else." "You know that's not true. About Mummy too." "Oh, yes, about Mummy." [p102] "Have you often been into the WC with Mummy?" "Very often." "And were you disgusted?" "Yes ... No." "You like being there when Mummy widdles or does lumf?" "Yes, very much." "Why do you like it so much?" "I don't know." "Because you think you'll see her widdler." "Yes, I do think that." [p103] "What does a loud row [==flush of WC] remind you of?" "That I've got to do lumf in the WC." "Why?" "I don't know. A loud row sounds as though you were doing lumf, and a little one of widdle." "I say, wasn't the bus-horse the same colour as a lumf?" "Yes." (very much struck) [p104] At this point, Freud magnaminously points out that Hans's father has been asking too many questions, and thus the proper analysis is ob- scure and uncertain. Fortunately, Freud is so brilliant that he can discern the underlying truth anyway. Daddy, I thought something: "I was in the bath, and then the plumber came and unscrewed it. Then he took a big borer and stuck it into my stomach." Hans's father translated this phantasy as follows: " 'I was in bed with Mamma. Then Papa came and drove me away. With his big penis he pushed me out of my place by Mamma.'" Let us suspend our judgement for the present. [p 105] Good idea. Freud cautiously waits for some clearer evidence. "Have you ever seen a horse doing lumf?" "Yes, very often." "Does it make a loud row when it does lumf?" "Yes." "What does the row remind you of?" "Like when lumf falls into the chamber." [p105] Hmmm. It looks like the father isn't probing deep enough to get the explicit words out of Little Hans's mouth. But his father still sees through the surface: The bus-horse that falls down and makes a row with its feet is no doubt--a lumf falling and making a noise. His fear of defaecation and his fear of heavily loaded carts is equivalent to the fear of a heavily loaded stomach. [p105] As Freud comments: In this roundabout way Hans's father was beginning to get a glimmering of the true state of affairs. [p105] More fears and their origin are revealed by Little Hans's father: "It's only in the big bath that I'm afraid of falling in." "But Mamma baths you in it. Are you afraid of Mummy dropping you in the water?" "I'm afraid of her letting go and my head going in." "But you know Mummy's fond of you and won't let go of you." "I only just thought it?" "Why?" "I don't know at all." "Perhaps it was because you'd been naughty and thought she didn't love you any more?" "Yes." "When you were watching Mummy giving Hanna [his little sister] her bath, you wished she would let go of her so that Hanna should fall in?" "Yes." Hans's father, we cannot help thinking, had made a very good guess. [pp106-7] Now why can't Freud help but think so? Little Hans's father skillfully reveals the depth of Little Hans's erotic love for his mother: "It seems to me that, all the same, you do wish Mummy would have a baby." "But I don't want it to happen." "But you wish for it?" "Oh yes, *wish*." "Do you kow why you wish for it? It's because you'd like to be Daddy." "Yes....How does it work?" "How does what work?" "You say Daddies don't have babies; so how does it work, my wanting to be Daddy?" "You'd like to be Daddy and married to Mummy; you'd like to be as big as me and have a moustache; and you'd like Mummy to have a baby." "And, Daddy, when I'm married I'll only have one if I want to, when I'm married to Mummy, and if I don't want a baby, God won't want it either, when I'm mar- ried." "Would you like to be married to Mummy?" "Oh yes." [pp130-1] It's very lucky for the experimental support for his theories that Little Hans had such knowledgeable parents to help him formulate his Oedipal complex so clearly. Freud believes there's a lot of support for his theories here, but he realizes there are certain difficulties to be overcome: My impression is that the picture of a child's sexual life presented in this observation of little Hans agrees very well with the account I gave of it (basing my views upon psychoanalytic examinations of adults) in my _Sex- ualtheorie_. But before going into the details of this agreement I must deal with two objections which will be raised against my making use of the present analysis for this purpose. The first objection is to the effect that Hans was not a normal child, but (as events--the illness itself, in fact--showed) had a predisposition to neurosis, and was a little "degenerate;" it would be illegitimate, therefore, to apply to other normal children conclusions which might perhaps be true of him. I shall postpone consideration fo this objection, since it only limits the value of the observation, and does not completely null- ify it. According to the second and more uncompromising objection, an analysis of a child conducted by its father, who went to work instilled with *my* theoretical views and infected with *my* prejudices, must be entirely devoid of any objective worth. A child, it will be said, is highly suggestible, and in regard to no one, perhaps, more than its own father .... [p139] But Freud knows that The arbitray has no existence in mental life. [p140] But he defends his deductions, since the ends justify the means: It is true that during the analysis Hans had to be told many things that he could not say himself, that he had to be presented with thoughts which he had so far shown no signs of possessing, and that his attention had to be turned in the direction from which his father was expec- ting something to come. This detract from the evidential value of the analysis; but the procedure is the same in every case. For a psychoanalysis is not an impartial scientific investigation, but a therapeutic measure. Its essense is not to prove anything, but to alter something. [p141] And Freud takes pains to point out how many of Little Hans's observations were made independently of parental prompting: Like all other children, he applied his childish sexual theories to the material before him without having re- ceived any encouragement to do so. These theories are extremely remote from the adult mind. Indeed, in this instance I actually omitted to warn Hans's father that the boy would be bound to approach the subject of child- birth by way of the excretory comlex. This negligence on my part, though it led to an obscure phase in the analysis, Editorial comment: this fear of depriving patients of the benefits of treatment often interferes with clean experimental tests via comparison against untreated controls. was nevertheless the means of producing a good piece of evidence of the genuineness and independence of Hans's mental processes. He suddenly became occupied with "lumf," without his father, who is supposed to have been practicing suggestion upon him, having the least idea how he had arrived at that subject or what was going to come of it. [p142] But Freud realizes that there are skeptics out there: I am aware that even with this analysis I shall not suc- ceed in convincing any one who will not let himself be convinced.... [p143] Now where did he get that idea from? ucbvax!brahms!weemba Wimpy Grad Student/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 I have never swerved one inch from the basic teachings of Freud. Never, never, never. Not one inch. I have remained faithful to Freud through thick and thin. That is the justification of all my work. -Dr Karl Anschauung, MD