Freud's case report on Little Hans is interpreted as a psychoanalytic contribution to the ontogenesis of language and consciousness. As shown by the authors, the therapeutic intervention did not have the function of 'reconstruction' in the wake of previous 'language destruction', but was intended to create the conditions prerequisite to the living through of the Oedipal conflict (ego foundation). Only participation by way of identification with the way of life of the father (or the therapist), as the 'third one' who, at the same time, is the one 'knowing everything', facilitates the formation of an object relationship with the mother that is no longer threatened by symbiotic regression.