Teaching and the Beginnings of Theory

For the preparation of a didactic article, I had occasion recently to re-read attentively the literature on the phobias, particularly of course Freud's writings on the subject. About the same time, I was re-reading the essays of Heinz Hartmann (1964) in their new format, which deal so comprehensively with the problems of theory and theorizing. Because of this dual 'actual situation', I was sensitive simultaneously to the practical problems of didactic exposition and to the role and meaning of theory-formation. Specifically, I was doubly alerted to the problem of teaching about phobias and to the development of Freud's theories of the neuroses. It occurred to me, among other things, that, in the particular writings I reviewed, there was a progressive alteration in the meaning of the words 'Little Hans'. On first acquaintance in the 1909 paper (Freud, 1909), Little Hans is a boy of five, with many facets and interests and several prominent problems, among them the presenting fact of his fear of horses. There is much more than a 'phobia' in this paper, and its findings and interpretations have provided models for the understanding of many infantile situations, not only those connected with neurosis. Notably the paper is the foundation of child analysis. The paper is obviously useful in multiple ways and has indeed been much used and quoted.

Freud himself found it very quotable in the specific matter of neurosis-formation and neurosis-theory, and it is here that his later teaching can be thought of as giving the term 'Little Hans' new meaning. I refer particularly to the pithy summary of the horse phobia in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety(Freud, 1926) where we encounter Little Hans at what is ordinarily called a 'different level' Here Little Hans becomes a set of ideas, a diagram or outline, rather than a real little boy. The meta-linguistic Little Hans now consists of (i) instincts (oedipal) and (ii) an ego, which can perceive danger and react with (a) anxie