Meeting of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

January 5, 1987. THE RIDDLE OF LITTLE HANS. John Munder Ross, Ph.D.

Dr. Ross noted that in the last decade, researchers have repeatedly emphasized the consequences of "paternal insufficiency" during the second year of life. At this critical period in the articulation of self and of core gender identity, an actual or felt lack of fathering leaves a boy at risk in terms of cohesive masculinity, selfhood, and concepts of sex differences. His fear of fusion and attendant emasculation is thus exacerbated. During the ensuing oedipal crisis, gender and sexual identity receive additional elaboration. At this point, paternal deprivation leads to another, more conflictual dilemma: the boy gropes not only for his heterosexual identity, but also for his procreative identity. Being able to grasp the father's paternal role allows the child to include sexual union and the self-completion and fecundity it yields within the confines of his masculinity. Relative absence of fathering during this period makes it difficult for a boy to fully synthesize these two strains in his masculinity.

Dr. Ross turned to Freud's case of Little Hans to further elucidate these concepts. Freud used the case to embody his theory of infantile sexuality. He felt that Hans presented the castration complex suffered by the little boy as he attempts to negotiate his oedipal passage—his positive oedipus complex, in modern parlance. Freud stressed Hans's wish to replace his father in his mother's bed, his ambivalence toward the man he both loved and hated, and his fear of retaliation at his father's hand. When Hans's father, supervised by Freud, made his son aware of his own intentions, of the imagined danger accompanying them, and of the anatomical difference between the sexes, he was relieved of his neurosis. Freud noted that Hans's ignorance of the procreative function of males remained to be addressed. Dr. Ross proposed to augment Freud's conclusions with a focus on Hans's ambisexuality as well