[Oedipus Complex] In his attitude towards his father and mother
Hans confirms in the most concrete and uncompromising manner what I have said in my Interpretation of Dreams and in my Three Essays with regard to the sexual relations of a child to his parents. Hans really was a little
Oedipus who wanted to have his father 'out of the way', to get rid of him, so that he might be alone with his beautiful mother and sleep with her. This wish had originated during his summer holidays, when the alternating
presence and absence of his father had drawn Hans's attention to the condition upon which depended the intimacy with his mother which he longed for. At that time the form taken by the wish had been merely that his father
should 'go away'; and at a later stage it became possible for his fear of being bitten by a white horse to attach itself directly on to this form of the wish, owing to a chance impression which he received at the moment of
some one else's departure. But subsequently (probably not until they had moved back to Vienna, where his father's absences were no longer to be reckoned on) the wish had taken the form that his father should be permanently
away - that he should be 'dead'. The fear which sprang from this death-wish against his father, and which may thus be said to have had a normal motive, formed the chief obstacle to the analysis until it was
removed during the conversation in my consulting-room.(1) Notes: (From "Analysis of a Phobya in a Five-Years-Old Boy".)
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