Little Hans

Herbert Graf (10 April 1903, Vienna – 5 April 1973, Geneva) was an Austrian-American opera producer. Born in Vienna in 1903, he was the son of Max Graf (1873–1958), the Austrian author, critic, musicologist and member of Sigmund Freud's circle of friends. Herbert Graf was the Little Hans discussed in Freud's 1909 study Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy.

This was one of just a few case studies which Freud published. In his introduction to the case, he had in the years prior to the case been encouraging his friends and associates, including the parents of Little Hans, to collect observations on the sexual life of children in order to help him develop his theory of infantile sexuality. Thus Hans' father had been sending notes about the child's development to Freud before Little Hans developed his fear of horses. At the age of five Herbert became a patient of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who identified him in his writings as "Little Hans". He was the subject of Freud's early but extensive study of castration anxiety and the Oedipus complex. Freud saw Herbert only once and did not analyze the child himself, but rather supervised the child's father (Max Graf) who carried out the analysis and sent extensive notes to Freud. In the published version, Hans' father's account is abridged and punctuated by Freud's own comments.

When he was four years old, Herbert was witness to a frightening event when he was at the local park in the company of the family's maid. A cart horse pulling a heavy load collapsed. Herbert became fearful of going out into the street, with his fear focused on horses and heavily loaded vehicles, which he was afraid would fall over. This fear was interpreted as a neurosis (equinophobia). Hans' father initially attributes the neurosis to "sexual over-excitement caused by his mother's caresses" and fear caused by the large penises of horses. While not rejecting these explanations, Freud gradually encourages the father also to understand Hans' disorder in terms of the anxiety caused by the arrival of his younger sister and an inadequately satisfied curiosity as to the origin of babies. Although a number of sexual and excretal fantasies and anxieties (such as Oedipal wishes and castration anxiety) are explored during the case history, Freud does not ultimately explain the case in terms of these factors, and on occasion reproaches Hans' father for sticking too dogmatically to a rigidly Oedipal understanding of his son's anxiety. Freud also regrets the parents' unwillingness to tell Hans the truth about coition.

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