Contributions to the neue freie presse 2 страница

‘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.’3 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.’

‘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.’5

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.

6 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.7

‘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.

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.

His anxiety, then, corresponded to repressed longing. But it was not the same thing as the longing: the repression must be taken into account too. Longing can be completely transformed into satisfaction if it is presented with the object longed for. Therapy of that kind is no longer effective in dealing with anxiety. The anxiety remains even when the longing can be satisfied. It can no longer be completely retransformed into libido; there is something that keeps the libido back under repression.¹ 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 that the anxiety was less; for he did 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 object. It was on this walk that he first expressed a fear that a horse would bite him. Where did the material for this phobia come from? Probably from the complexes, as yet unknown to us, which had contributed to the repression and were keeping under repression his libidinal feelings towards his mother. That is an unsolved problem, and we shall now have to follow the development of the case in order to arrive at its solution. Hans’s father has already given us certain clues, probably trustworthy ones, such as that Hans had always observed horses with interest on account of their large widdlers, that he had supposed that his mother must have a widdler like a horse, and so on. We might thus be led to think that the horse was merely a substitute for his mother. But if so, what would be the meaning of his being afraid in the evening that a horse would come into the room? A small boy’s foolish fears, it will be said. But a neurosis never says foolish things, any more than a dream. When we cannot understand something, we always fall back on abuse. An excellent way of making a task lighter.

¹ To speak quite frankly, this is actually the criterion according to which we decide whether such feelings of mingled apprehension and longing are normal or not: we begin to call them ‘pathological anxiety’ from the moment at which they can no longer be relieved by the attainment of the object longed for.0

There is another point in regard to which we must avoid giving way to this temptation. Hans admitted that every night before going to sleep he amused himself with playing with his penis. ‘Ah!’ the family doctor will be inclined to say, ‘now we have it. The child masturbated: hence his pathological anxiety.’ But gently. That the child was getting pleasure for himself by masturbating does not by any means explain his anxiety; on the contrary, it makes it more problematical than ever. States of anxiety are not produced by masturbation or by getting satisfaction in any shape. Moreover, we may presume that Hans, who was now four and three-quarters, had been indulging in this pleasure every evening for at least a year (see p. 2003). And we shall find that at this moment he was actually engaged in a struggle to break himself of the habit - a state of things which fits in much better with repression and the generation of anxiety.

We must say a word, too, on behalf of Hans’s excellent and devoted mother. His father accuses her, not without some show of justice, of being responsible for the outbreak of the child’s neurosis, on account of her excessive display of affection for him and her too frequent readiness to take him into her bed. We might as easily blame her for having precipitated the process of repression by her energetic rejection of his advances (‘that’d be piggish’). But she had a predestined part to play, and her position was a hard one.

I arranged with Hans’s father that he should tell the boy that all this business about horses was a piece of nonsense and nothing more. The truth was, his father was to say, that he was very fond of his mother and wanted to be taken into her bed. The reason he was afraid of horses now was that he had taken so much interest in their widdlers. He himself had noticed that it was not right to be so very much preoccupied with widdlers, even with his own, and he was quite right in thinking this. I further suggested to his father that he should begin giving Hans some enlightenment in the matter of sex knowledge. The child’s past behaviour justified us in assuming that his libido was attached to a wish to see his mother’s widdler; so I proposed to his father that he should take away this aim from Hans by informing him that his mother and all other female beings (as he could see from Hanna) had no widdler at all. This last piece of enlightenment was to be given him on a suitable occasion when it had been led up to by some question or some chance remark on Hans’s part.

1 The next batch of news about Hans covers the period from March 1st to March 17th. The interval of more than a month will be accounted for directly.

‘After Hans had been enlightened,¹ there followed a fairly quiet period, during which he could be induced without any particular difficulty to go for his daily walk in the Stadtpark. His fear of horses became transformed more and more into a compulsion to look at them. He said: "I have to look at horses, and then I’m frightened."

‘After an attack of influenza, which kept him in bed for two weeks, his phobia increased again so much that he could not be induced to go out, or at any rate no more than on to the balcony. Every Sunday he went with me to Lainz,² because on that day there is not much traffic in the streets, and it is only a short way to the station. On one occasion in Lainz he refused to go for a walk outside the garden because there was a carriage standing in front of it. After another week which he has had to spend indoors because he has had his tonsils cut, the phobia has grown very much worse again. He goes out on to the balcony, it is true, but not for a walk. As soon as he gets to the street door he hurriedly turns round.

‘On Sunday, March 1st, the following conversation took place on the way to the station. I was once more trying to explain to him that horses do not bite. He: "But white horses bite. There’s a white horse at Gmunden that bites. If you hold your finger to it it bites." (I was struck by his saying "finger" instead of "hand".) He then told me the following story, which I give here in a connected form: "When Lizzi had to go away, there was a cart with a white horse in front of her house, to take her luggage to the station." (Lizzi, he tells me, was a little girl who lived in a neighbouring house.) "Her father was standing near the horse, and the horse turned its head round (to touch him), and he said to Lizzi: ‘Don’t put your finger to the white horse or it’ll bite you’" Upon this I said: "I say, it strikes me that it isn’t a horse you mean, but a widdler, that one mustn’t put one’s hand to."

¹ As to the meaning of his anxiety; not yet as to women having no widdlers.

² A suburb of Vienna where Hans’s grandparents lived.2

‘He: "But a widdler doesn’t bite."

‘I: "Perhaps it does, though." He then went on eagerly to try and prove to me that it really was a white horse.¹

‘On March 2nd, as he again showed signs of being afraid, I said to him: "Do you know what? This nonsense of yours" (that is how he speaks of his phobia) "will get better if you go for more walks. It’s so bad now because you haven’t been able to go out because you were ill."

‘He: "Oh no, it’s so bad because I still put my hand to my widdler every night."'

Doctor and patient, father and son, were therefore at one in ascribing the chief share in the pathogenesis of Hans’s present condition to his habit of masturbating. Indications were not wanting, however, of the presence of other significant factors.

‘On March 3rd we got in a new maid, whom he is particularly pleased with. She lets him ride on her back while she cleans the floor, and so he always calls her "my horse", and holds on to her dress with cries of "Gee-up". On about March 10th he said to this new nursemaid: "If you do such-and-such a thing you’ll have to undress altogether, and take off your chemise even." (He meant this as a punishment, but it is easy to recognize the wish behind it.)

‘She: "And what’d be the harm? I’d just say to myself I haven’t got any money to spend on clothes."

‘He: "Why, it’d be shameful. People’d see your widdler." ‘

Here we have the same curiosity again, but directed on to a new object, and (appropriately to a period of repression) cloaked under a moralizing purpose.

‘On March 13th in the morning I said to Hans: "You know, if you don’t put your hand to your widdler any more, this nonsense of yours’ll soon get better."

¹ Hans’s father had no reason to doubt that it was a real event that the boy was describing. -I may also mention that the sensations of itching in the glans penis, which lead children to touch their genitals, are usually described by them in the phrase ‘Es beisst mich’ [‘I’m itching’, literally ‘it bites me’].3

‘Hans: "But I don’t put my hand to my widdler any more."

‘I: "But you still want to."

‘Hans: "Yes, I do. But wanting’s not doing, and doing’s not wanting." (!!)

‘I: "Well, but to prevent your wanting to, this evening you’re going to have a bag to sleep in."

‘After this we went out in front of the house. Hans was still afraid, but his spirits were visibly raised by the prospect of having his struggles made easier for him, and he said: "Oh, if I have a bag to sleep in my nonsense’ll have gone to-morrow." And, in fact, he was much less afraid of horses, and was fairly calm when vehicles drove past.

‘Hans had promised to go with me to Lainz the next Sunday, March 15th. He resisted at first, but finally went with me all the same. He obviously felt all right in the street, as there was not much traffic, and said: "How sensible! God’s done away with horses now." On the way I explained to him that his sister has not got a widdler like him. Little girls and women, I said, have no widdlers: Mummy has none, Anna has none, and so on.

‘Hans: "Have you got a widdler?"

‘I: "Of course. Why, what do you suppose?"

‘Hans (after a pause): "But how do little girls widdle, if they have no widdlers?"

‘I: "They don’t have widdlers like yours. Haven’t you noticed already, when Hanna was being given her bath?"

‘All day long he was in very high spirits, went tobogganing, and so on. It was only towards evening that he fell into low spirits again and seemed to be afraid of horses.

‘That evening his attack of nerves and his need for being coaxed with were less pronounced than on previous days. Next day his mother took him with her into town and he was very much frightened in the streets. The day after, he stopped at home and was very cheerful. Next morning he woke up in a fright at about six o’clock. When he was asked what was the matter he said: "I put my finger to my widdler just a very little. I saw Mummy quite naked in her chemise, and she let me see her widdler. I showed Grete,¹ my Grete, what Mummy was doing, and showed her my widdler. Then I took my hand away from my widdler quick." When I objected that he could only mean "in her chemise" or "quite naked", Hans said: "She was in her chemise, but the chemise was so short that I saw her widdler."'

This was none of it a dream, but a masturbatory phantasy, which was, however, equivalent to a dream. What he made his mother do was evidently intended as a piece of self-justification: ‘If Mummy shows her widdler, I may too.’

We can gather two things from this phantasy: first, that his mother’s reproof had produced a powerful result on him at the time it was made, and secondly, that the enlightenment he had been given to the effect that women have no widdlers was not accepted by him at first. He regretted that it should be so, and in his phantasy he stuck to his former view. He may also perhaps have had his reasons for refusing to believe his father for the moment.

¹ ‘Grete is one of the little girls at Gmunden about whom Hans is having phantasies just now; he talks and plays with her.’4 Weekly report from Hans’s father: ‘My dear Professor, I enclose the continuation of Hans’s story - quite an interesting instalment. I shall perhaps take the liberty of calling upon you during your consulting hours on Monday and if possible of bringing Hans with me - assuming that he will come. I said to him to-day: "Will you come with me on Monday to see the Professor, who can take away your nonsense for you?"

‘He: "No."

‘I: "But he’s got a very pretty little girl." - Upon which he willingly and gladly consented.

‘Sunday, March 22nd. With a view to extending the Sunday programme, I proposed to Hans that we should go first to Schönbrunn, and only go on from there to Lainz at midday. He had, therefore, to make his way not only from our house to the Hauptzollamt station on the Stadtbahn, but also from the Hietzing station to Schönbrunn, and again from there to the Hietzing steam tramway station. And he managed all this, looking hurriedly away whenever any horses came along, for he was evidently feeling nervous. In looking away he was following a piece of advice given him by his mother.

‘At Schönbrunn he showed signs of fear at animals which on other occasions he had looked at without any alarm. Thus he absolutely refused to go into the house in which the giraffe is kept, nor would he visit the elephant, which used formerly to amuse him a great deal. He was afraid of all the large animals, whereas he was very much entertained by the small ones. Among the birds, he was also afraid of the pelican this time - which had never happened before - evidently because of its size again.

‘I therefore said to him: "Do you know why you’re afraid of big animals? Big animals have big widdlers, and you’re really afraid of big widdlers."

‘Hans: "But I’ve never seen the big animals’ widdlers yet."¹

‘I: "But you have seen a horse’s, and a horse is a big animal."

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23