TY - JOUR
T1 - Attachment and sibling rivalry in Little Hans
T2 - The fantasy of the two giraffes revisited
AU - Wakefield, Jerome C.
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - Freud's interpretation of Little Hans's "phantasy of the two giraffes" (1909) is pivotal to his oedipal analysis that Hans has inchoate desires for sexual intercourse with his mother. Bowlby (1973) argued that Freud's focus on his oedipal theory led him to ignore preoedipal attachment-related factors that have equal plausibility in explaining the clinical data. However, Bowlby did not attempt to apply the attachment perspective to the interpretation of Hans's fantasies that form the core of the case material. A microanalysis of Hans's giraffe fantasy and the evidence used to support Freud's claims about it yields an attachment-based sibling rivalry account arguably of greater explanatory power than the oedipal account. Consistent with Bowlby's hypothesis, the evidence suggests that Hans's giraffe fantasy is about the sibling rivalry triangle involved in caregiver attachment access, rather than (or in addition to) the oedipal triangle. The issue of multiple levels of meaning and the methodological challenges raised by multiple determination is also considered. The giraffe fantasy's attachment-theoretic explanation encourages a rethinking of this classic case and strengthens Bowlby's claim that the case is fruitfully viewed from an attachment perspective.
AB - Freud's interpretation of Little Hans's "phantasy of the two giraffes" (1909) is pivotal to his oedipal analysis that Hans has inchoate desires for sexual intercourse with his mother. Bowlby (1973) argued that Freud's focus on his oedipal theory led him to ignore preoedipal attachment-related factors that have equal plausibility in explaining the clinical data. However, Bowlby did not attempt to apply the attachment perspective to the interpretation of Hans's fantasies that form the core of the case material. A microanalysis of Hans's giraffe fantasy and the evidence used to support Freud's claims about it yields an attachment-based sibling rivalry account arguably of greater explanatory power than the oedipal account. Consistent with Bowlby's hypothesis, the evidence suggests that Hans's giraffe fantasy is about the sibling rivalry triangle involved in caregiver attachment access, rather than (or in addition to) the oedipal triangle. The issue of multiple levels of meaning and the methodological challenges raised by multiple determination is also considered. The giraffe fantasy's attachment-theoretic explanation encourages a rethinking of this classic case and strengthens Bowlby's claim that the case is fruitfully viewed from an attachment perspective.
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U2 - 10.1177/00030651070550032001
DO - 10.1177/00030651070550032001
M3 - Article
C2 - 17915649
AN - SCOPUS:34648816707
SN - 0003-0651
VL - 55
SP - 821
EP - 849
JO - Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
JF - Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
IS - 3
ER -