Little Hans - 1909

• Method.


  • Freud carried out a case study of a child called Hans who had a phobia of horses
  • Hans was observed by his father, who made notes of his dreams and the stuff he said, and passed them onto Freud to analyse
• Results.

  • Hans was afraid of horses because he thought they might bite him or fall on him
  • during the study he developed an interest in widdlers - his mum told him not to play with it otherwise she would cut it off
  • Hans told his father about a dream where he married his mum and his dad was now the grandfather
• Conclusion.

  • Freud's interpretation was that Hans had reached the phallic stage and showed evidence of the 'Oedipus complex'
  • the horse resembled Hans' father as they both had big penises
  • his horse fear was an example of displacement - protecting him from his real fear of his father
  • the fear that the horse would bite him was Hans' castration anxiety
• Evaluation - case study


  • allow for detailed examination
  • conducted in clinical settings so results applied to helping the individual
  • cannot generalise to wider population -> lacks population validity
• Evaluation - social desirability


  • Hans' father provided most of the evidence -> Freud only met Hans once - his father was a fan of Freud's theories so possibly used leading questions and was biased
  • Hans later went to Freud at age 19 after reading his own case study and told him he didn't recall any of it