Lacan considers that Little Hans could not cope with his erotic drives because he faced with the lack of a castrating father. Contrary to Lacan, Freud envisages the castration anxiety in the boy as a threatening situation. Little Hans had experienced an intense anxiety because of the lack of castration, coming from the father. Castration is, according to Lacan, a necessary negativity that should operate in the child's psychic reality. He remarks that the signifier “horse” substitutes the signifier “father”, which is inoperant in Little Hans' case. In fact, the phobic object intervenes at the point where Little Hans had grasped that he was not the phallus of his mother any more and had felt lost. The birth of his sister Hanna had renforced his anxiety. Hence, the creation of the phobic object was necessary in order to protect him against his intense anxiety.