Is Phobia a Symptom or a Clinical Structure?

            Phobia is a persistent irrational fear of specific things or people and this happens when people tries to avoid certain objects. When this fear becomes excessive or uncontrollable, it is when it is referred to as phobia. There are two types of phobia and these are, general and specific. The type of phobia in question is that on specific items and the case in hand is that one of Little Hans who developed a specific phobia on horses. Sigmund Freud used this case to develop his theory called Oedipus complex and on Castration anxiety. The same case was used to attack Feuds interpretation on phobia by Jacques Lucan. They both while referring to the case of Han tried to answer the question, is phobia a symptom or a clinical structure? They gave their views depending on their understanding but neither was able to give a definite answer as whether it was a symptom or a clinical structure. This is what this essay will basically focus on.

            This is one case that Freud in his bid to understand the complexity of phobia he used and was a case of a five years baby who developed fear on horses that was dependent on other factors such as the sexuality of this child plus the relationship he had with his mother. Sigmund never interviewed the kid but he was very close to his father who used to brief Sigmund with all the latest information concerning Hans’ growth and development. As I have send above, Freud never studied the baby himself but advised and instructed his father Giraf on what to do. It is those reports that helped him to analyze how Little Han was doing and behaving. (Rathus, 256)

            What exactly happened was that when Herbert was four years old and in a company of their hose helper in a local park he witnessed a horse pulled cart probably due to the heavy load it was carrying collapsed and killed one person who was standing by the road. Because Little Herbert was a witness to this, he developed specific fear on horses and on vehicles carrying heavy loads. This even worsened such that he was even afraid to go alone in the streets. His father understood that Hans was developing these fears due to some sexual related issues and not because of what he saw. According to his father, this sexual excitement emanated from the relationship that Han had with his mother. When he was young he used to sleep with his mother in the same bed but he was changed later when his sister Hanna was born. Little Han could see his father’s long penis because they used to sleep in the same bed thus he related the horse’s long penis with his father. These fears also arose because he was doubted where children come from and this was more particularly when her sister was born. The problem was because his parents never told him anything to do with coition.

            This is what Freud used in doing his analysis and it helped him to write his paper entitled Phobia analysis in a five year old boy. According to Sigmund Freud, Little Han was starved with the information that he needed while growing. He was worried how children are born and to be more specific where his sister came from. He kept asking himself what role did his mother and father played as far as Hanna’s birth was concerned. In trying to understand this, he came up with many thought that would help him to understand this. (Nobus D. 2000)

            According to Freud, Little Hans turned to masturbating himself because he could not get the sexual satisfaction that he anticipated that he would get from his mother. He opted to start masturbating because he thought that if his dad knew that he was trying to seduce his mother, he would be punished. This is what led him to develop his distorted perception towards sex. This problem was later resolved when his dad briefed him on those issues that were disturbing him. Though he wished that his father would die so that he would be left with his mother, he stopped to think this way and their relationship improved. Hans blamed his fears on his parents whom he said kept on scolding him and this reached to the extreme stage such that he could not even go out alone citing that he would be bitten by a horse. (Rathus, 256)

            In this study, Freud tried to show the link between anxiety and phobia. On phobia, he noted that specific phobia is linked with genetic factors. That is when Id and sex impulses are repressed they result to phobia. It was undeniable that little Hans was sexually attracted to his mother but he was afraid that if his father knew what he was thinking he would kill him so instead he wished his father would die and leave him. He even likened his father to the horses because they had black blinkers and muzzles something that resembled his father’s moustache and glasses that he wore. Han did not want to direct all his hatred to his father and for this reason he shifted his hatred to the horses. These fears might have started long ago but they became eminent after he witnessed a cart pulled by a horse collided with a speeding vehicle and killed a bystander. (Jarvis, 41)

            When Hans was only five years old, he was already addicted with masturbation and even tried to seduce his mother to touch it but she objected and even threatened him that she would cut it the next time she will see him stroking it. This is what became the origin of castration fears and came to think that her mother’s sex genitalia as well as those for his sister looked like that because they were castrated. At this time his fears on horses increased to an extent that he could not go outside alone because he feared he could be bitten by a horse. His father saw some relationship with his fears to the horse and his moustache. At this time Han could even see some imaginary children and when his mother asked him who they were, she told her that they were her grandchildren.

            This specific form of phobia is what Freud in his theory referred to as the Oedipus complex. And in this theory Freud likened the horses with Hans’ father. He concluded that Hans saw them as such because they had long penises like the one he saw on his father when they used to sleep in the same bed. Little Han used to compare the penis of his father with that of the horse. Though Han was fully affected by this phobia according to Freud, he later overcame this problem and started fantasizing having a long penis similar to that of his father. He even married in presence of his both parents. Using this case, Freud came to know of a stage in child development called Phallus stage. This is when boys and girls realize that they are different in that boys have penises while girls do not have. It is in this stage that unknown phobia starts being generated that is based on limited understanding on reproduction health. It is here that castration anxiety starts and the boys start thinking that they will be castrated and later this develops into fully fledged specific phobia like in the case of Little Hans. (Jarvis, 42)

            In response to this, Freud says that boys tend to side with their fathers so as to suppress the castration fears. They also start repressing the long entrenched sexual desires towards their mother. He gave an analogy of how people befriend a bully so that they would not be mistreated and attacked by them. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex in girls is not consciously felt or identified. Girls are capable of suppressing the same fears in an unconscious manner. “When girls discover they lack a penis, they feel that they have somehow come off worse and are left with a sense of penis envy, the wish to have a penis.” (Jarvis, 42) In his view, Freud believed that this wish is eventually fulfilled in that the girls start having desires to get a baby and finally they give birth.

            Both Freud and Hans’ father believed that sex is in the roots of the boys’ problems and that there is no way it could be ignored. This is why Hans was jealous of his little sister because she was receiving more attention than he was getting after she was born. The other reason for his resentments was that he was moved to another bed after her sister was born and for this reason he was not able to sleep near his mother whom he was sexually attracted to. Although this is what was going on in his mind, he was well aware that his father would punish him if he knew and this is what Sigmund Freud termed as neurotic fears (Billig, 113)

            Since her little sister was born, Freud noted that much attention that used to be given to Hans was directed to other things something that made him to develop heartedness towards his father. He even started to think that it would be better if his father was dead because if he came to know his thoughts, then he would be punished by castration and the site of the female genitalia made him cold because he thought that they looked that way because they were castrated. Han at this time was not sure whether he hated his dad completely and for this reason he directed his anger to the horses. So, the horses were representative of his father. (Jarvis M. and Russell J., 91)

            To Freud, the Oedipus complex results because the parents live in denial that those thoughts do not exist in the minds of their children and it is for this reason that Hans became aggressive towards his father for he refused him to sleep in the same bed with his mother and also came to hate his real sister for she made him stop sharing the same bed with his parents. Just as his dad was harsh to him, he became the same to his mother for hitting Hannah on the bare bottoms. (Billig, 118) This was evident because when Hans was asked by his father who he would beat between his mother and his sister, he said his mother because she beat his sister.

             It is all during this assessment period that Hans’ real problem for his fears was established. According to Freud, this entire problem emanated from the penis. And Han came to be aware of his penis when his mother threatened that he would take him to a doctor for it to be cut if he continued touching it. At this time Hans’ penis was small but he consoled himself that it would grow long after he grew old. He even tried to trick his mother to touch it but when she declined and asked why, he said that it would give him some satisfaction and that is how by and by he ended into masturbation. His dad knew that Hans was not afraid of horses and that it was him that he feared. This is true because when he his father likened himself with the horse, Little Han did not dare to contradict this. Little Han was also seen many times playing a game that involved biting his father.

            Han was also scared taking a bath in a big bath a thing that Freud understood to mean that Han was guilty for the way he thought his sister would drown in the bath tub thus he feared that if it was known he would be punished in the same way. In diverting those thoughts, Hans started talking of a lumf. Freud interpreted this to mean that her little sister, Hanna was a lumf and that all those things that Hans was talking about such as buses, furniture and carts to Han they symbolized pregnancy. The falling of a horse pulled cart represented child birth and the collapsed horse represented other different things according to what Freud thought Hans was thinking. Freud said the horse represented the death of his father and it also symbolized her mother giving birth to her sister.

            To Freud, Little Hans overcame the fears of being castrated in that later he even came to fantasize a plumber removing his bottom with a pair of pincers and replacing it with another one that was bigger in size and with a bigger widdler (penis) Freud interpreted this to mean that Hans wished he could have the body size like that of his father. When he was asked why he wanted a bigger widdler he said that he would like to have a widdler and bottom similar to that of hid dad and therefore Freud thought that Hans had overcome his castration fears. (Ellenberger H. 1970). There was a time when Han was asked if he would like his father to die and in his response, he clashed his toy horse to mean yes. Also he used to play with some imaginary children and when he was asked who they were and if they were still alive yet boys do not give birth, he said that he was there mother but now he was there father. When his father asked him if he would like to be married and later have children, he said yes and that he would like the mother of his father Lainz to be their granny. Freud interpreted this to mean that Hans had no further wishes that his dad was dead.

            In the study of this case, Freud was able to identify the initial occurrence of fear that is not interrupted by other things and another fear that is attached to other things such as horses. He concluded that the independent fear cannot be termed as phobia as phobia is an extreme fear of a specific thing or an object and a good example is that of Hans towards horses and fearing to move out of his home. (Evans D., 145)

            On the other hand Lucan after he studied the case of Little Hans, he came up with his own views. “Anxiety appears first and that phobia is defensive formation which turns the anxiety into fear by a focusing it on a specific object.”  (Evans, 146) Contrary to what Freud was thinking, Lucan denies that instead of identifying a specific object that was feared to represent his father like Freud did, Lucan said that the key features of that phobic thing does not particularly  refer to one person such as his father but to other people who are different. Lucan supports this view by showing how Hans feared the horse in many ways for example there was a time he thought that the horse would crash down and fall on him and in other times that it would it would bite him. Because of this Lucan concluded that these thoughts in Hans mind were representative of different people in Hans’ life. The horse in this case “Functions not as an equivalent of a sole signified but as a signifier which has no univocal sense and is displaced onto different sign fields in turn.” (Evans, 146)

            According to Lucan, Han developed his phobia on horses because his father as the castration agent failed to perform his role in what Freud called as the Oedipus complex. Lucan argues that this phobia could not have arisen if his father intervened and gave him the truth of the matter. In Lucan’s perspective, when Hans’ sexual excitement revealed itself in masturbation, the mother to child phallus that existed in Hans’ imagination or to what Lucan called the preodipal triangle, changed from being the little Hans only source of satisfaction to something that was the source of anxiety. Lucan believed that Hans could have been saved from this phobia if his thoughts were put straight in good time by his parents for this could have symbolically castrated his mind thus deterring his fears from reaching to the extreme form of fear which is phobia.” The phobia functions by using an imaginary object (the horse) to reorganize the symbolic world of Hans and thus helping him to make the passage from the imaginary to the symbolic order.”(Evans, 146)

            The imaginary phobic object according to Lucan though it only acts as short time solution, it contributes towards making a sickening and worrisome situation to become probable, livable and thinkable. This is because it is capable of giving the victim a symbolic dimension and because of this Lucan concluded that this phobic object is not a real thing but something imaginary but worked like a signifier in that it represented every possible object that could be thought of in the world. Lucas used his view to interpret the case of little Hans which he believed that horse represented his father, himself, sister, friends and even his mother. According to Lucan, because Hans had exhausted all the possible chances of representing his thoughts, his imagination channel was blocked and thus he was left with no other option apart resorting to impossible signifying equations. (Jarvis M. and Russell J., 91)

            Lucas likened the role the phobia plays to that which Levi Strauss gave to myths that applies to an individual as opposed to the society. According to Levi Strauss, myths are not formed by either a natural or an archetypal element treated in isolation but in the way those elements are organized in an orderly manner such that if those elements are organized in an orderly manner such that even if these elements are relocated, the relationship between them cannot be destroyed.

             There are practical consequences that are associated with Lucan’s theory on phobia treatment. Lucan argues that instead of desensitizing the phobic trend or just giving an explanation to the object of phobia like what Freud used that the horse symbolized his father, the treatment instead should be geared towards addressing all the possible signifier of phobic objects. The victim should be encouraged to develop his own myth in line with his laws as this would help him to try all the possible elements that could be thought of and in thus doing the phobia would be solved.

            As Freud had noted in the case of Hans, phobia occupied no place in the psychiatric nosographies and for this reason he tried to resolve the uncertainty surrounding phobias but his explanation was hampered by certain ambiguities that he used. Because phobias are not found in neurotic and in psychotic subjects at once he concluded that they could not be regarded as pathological processes that are independent and this make them not to be regarded as symptoms. (Evans, 147)

            In his analysis, Freud used ambiguous language such that it was not clear if he categorized phobias as symptoms or as clinical structures. Freud in his study, he isolated a specific type of neurotic whose the key symptom is phobia. He termed this as anxiety hysteria so as to differentiate this from what in the beginning he called hysteria but because of his inability to give a clear explanation pertaining phobias, he left it to mean that phobia is either a symptom or a clinical structure. The same dilemma is found in the works of Lucan where the question is asked if they are structures or symptoms.

            According to Lucan, there are two types of neurotic structures that is, hysteria neurosis and obsession neurosis. Lucan refers to phobia more as a symptom rather than a structure though at times he referred to it as a third entity of neurosis thus implying a possibility of the structure of phobia. To Lucan, phobia is a type of neurosis that is the most radical. This was a question that he resolved later in 1968 when he stated that, “One cannot see phobia as a clinical entity but rather a resolving junction, something that must be elucidated in its relations with that towards which it usually tends, namely the two great orders of neurosis, hysteria and obsesionality and the junction which it realizes with perversion.” (Evans, 147)

            In short in Lucan’s perspective, phobia is not a clinical structure like hysteria neurosis and obsessional neurosis these two are but they only exist as a link between the two though the perverse structure has some connections with it. Both Lucan and Sigmund Freud were unable to categorize phobia categorically that is either as symptoms or as clinical structure but Lucan somehow tried to provide more information though it also implied that it was a structure unlike that of Freud which said that it could be either a clinical structure or a symptom.

Reference:

Billig M. 2005. Freudian Repression: Conversation creating the Unconscious. Cambridge           University Press.

Ellenberger H. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious. Basic Books.

Evans D. 1999. An introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge.

Jarvis M. and Russell J. 2003. Angels on Applied Psychology. Nelson Thornes.

Jarvis M. 2000. Theoretical approaches in psychology. Routledge.

Nobus D. 2000. Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practise of Psychoanalysis. Tylor and   Francis Group, Routledge.

Rathuss S.A. 2004. Psychology Concepts and Connections. Thomson, Wadsworth.