The Little Hans case is used to illustrate which psychoanalytic idea?

• A. Father
• B. Mother
• C. Castration anxiety
• D. The horse symbolized the mother

Answer: (A)

In Freudian theory, the Little Hans case is used to show how a child’s earliest fears and fantasies revolve around the father and the father’s authority during the phallic stage. Freud interpreted Hans’s fear of horses as a disguised expression of anxiety about the father and the threat of losing the mother to him. The horse was read as a stand-in for the father, so the case foregrounds the father as the central figure in this early psychoanalytic conflict. This focus on the father and the father–child dynamic is what the item aims to capture.