Looking Back and Moving Forward in Child Analysis: An Introduction

Freud once declared that psychoanalysis could not be like a philosophical system and produce a complete, ready-made theoretical structure. Instead it would have to “find its way step by step along the path towards understanding the intricacies of the mind …” (, pp. 35-36). As we know, one of his early significant steps along that path was in giving up the seduction theory and moving instead to the libido theory and the topographical model of the mind. Freud thought he had ample evidence for his theory of infantile sexuality from his experience in analyzing adults, yet he wanted further corroboration. This led him to ask his colleagues and students to collect observations of the sexual life of children for a “more direct and less roundabout proof of these fundamental theorems. Surely there must be a possibility of observing in children at first hand and in all the freshness of life the sexual impulses and wishes which we dig out so laboriously in adults from among their own debris …” (Freud 1909, p. 6). Max Graf stepped up to the plate and brought reports of his son's interest in what he called his “widdler.” The first report was from when Hans was not quite three years old; curious about the differences in sexes, he asked his mother if she also had a widdler. At three and a half his mother caught him masturbating and threatened him with castration, following which he became preoccupied with widdlers. Freud now had direct evidence for what he called the “castration complex,” and material from these reports found their way into his early papers on infantile sexuality (Freud 1905, 1908). However, Freud was rewarded with more than even he had hoped for, as when Hans was four and a half years old he developed a phobia of horses. Now Freud had the opportunity for more direct confirmation not only of his theories of childhood sexuality but also of his theories of symptom formation and his ideas about cure. Unwittingly,