Significantly though, in his correspondence, Hans’s father informs Freud that, ‘The remission after he [Hans] had been given his first piece of enlightenment was not so complete as I may have represented it’ (1909b: 99). As well as revealing the rather literal way in which Freud and the father were medicating Hans with knowledge—i.e. trying to make up the epistemological deficit—this observation also indicates Hans’s resistance to the experience of demystification that enlightenment necessarily entails. It is this resistance that impresses on the analysts the limitations of a simplistic research model in which ‘filling in the knowledge gaps’ would be a sufficient mode of enlightenment. It is also this resistance which confirms that the locus of the research endeavour can never reside simply with Freud or with Little Hans’s father. We might accept that Freud’s recommendations are a necessary part of Hans’s enlightenment (and his liberation from neurosis); yet we can also see how it is precisely the play of resistance that makes this enlightenment all the more profound. Instead of Little Hans’s research project being demeaned by the greater research project of Freud and the father—its errors summarily corrected and its ambitions redirected—we see a reflective structure emerge where error is admitted into the analytic process. In other words, we can recognise how Hans’s resistances to the enlightenments of his analysis (from Freud and the father) are not to be read as the child’s rejection of knowledge or research per se, but instead as a reassertion of his own research project. Hans has to be sustained as an active researcher rather than passively subjected to the researches of others.
By focussing on the research projects of childhood through the lens of the Little Hans case, I hope to have suggested how the passionate desire to know can be situated in a compound relation to the sexual instincts. Anticipating the still-to-be-formalised theory of narcissism, there is a productive ambiguity throughout Freud’s work of 1908-1915 in which Wissbegierde which is often indistinguishable from sexual curiosity, nonetheless cannot be wholly given over to the sexual instincts. In his theorising of infantile sexuality, Freud shows that a child’s researches are the products of vital exigencies. For example, Little Hans gave support to Freud’s contention that the general question ‘where do babies come from?’ arises from the crisis of epistemological significance prompted by the specific question ‘where did this particular, intruding baby come from?’(1908c: 213). This is a clear admission of the child’s self-interest in his research activities; but what is of further note is the relation between his self-interest and research per se. In other words, how, given his narcissistic investments, can the child be positioned as the prototypical researcher where the standards of disinterest and objectivity prevail? We have begun to answer this question by identifying what it is that Freud commends in the research projects of childhood: he admires the (narcissistic) self-belief of the child because it underpins the child’s desire to know; indeed the child attests to the principle that the desire to know must be based on the belief that one can know. But, the paradox of the child’s narcissism is such that this same self-belief which originally propels his curiosity, directs him towards the very encounters which potentially undermine it. So we can see in the case of Little Hans how the virtues of research may have attended upon his breakdown; after all, it was Hans’s emboldened and confident research enterprise which exposed him to a world which exceeded him. This suggestion runs somewhat counter to the idea that his breakdown was the inevitable conclusion of a naive world-view which could not be sustained beyond the narcissistic phase. Hans’s subsequent resistance to the enlightenment cure is especially significant then, because it instigates the dynamism of the analytic process. By resisting Freud’s administration of knowledge, Hans is reviving the audacious self-belief that Freud so commended in him as a researcher. If Hans is to be exemplary and not simply naive, it is vital that he puts up a resistance to the administrations of Freud; and that Freud has to find a way of recognising this ensures the integrity of the ongoing research project of psychoanalysis.
In this paper I have tried to develop my position in three ways. Firstly, I have suggested that Freud’s concept of Wissbegierde can be retroactively supported by his theory of narcissism. We have seen in particular how the child’s narcissistic investments in the illusions of omnipotence are not dissociable from the broader investments of research. By aligning Wissbegierde with the theory of narcissism in this way, I hope to have suggested that Freud is not simply concerned with rescuing the child from his narcissism, but also with recovering in the child’s narcissism the grounds of the research instinct. Secondly, I have underlined the importance of the analytic mediation of the errors of Little Hans’s research. Hans’s enlightenment is not directly gifted from Freud or the father; not even from the compound figure that emerges from ‘the affectionate care and scientific interest’ that they represent. What the three-way analytic structure supports is the experience of breakdown itself, which ultimately testifies to Hans’s research strength. Hans’s breakdown—his capacity for self-fragmentation—is proof of an instinct for research that moves beyond the sexual and conservative instincts. Thirdly, I have suggested that psychoanalysis supports this robust research instinct in the patient. Just as the researcher finds his prototype in the narcissistic infant whose enquiries are aided by narratives of self-sufficiency and mastery, so it goes for the case of psychoanalysis where enquiry is aided by the provisional and apparent integration of the patient’s memoir. But ultimately, as the case of little Hans demonstrates, the analytic commitment to the research instinct cannot disavow the possibility of fragmentation.
References
Alford, C.F. (1988) Narcissism: Socrates, the Frankfurt School and psychoanalytic theory. London: Yale University Press.
Blass, R. (2006) ‘A psychoanalytic understanding of the desire for knowledge as reflected in Freud’s Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood’ in International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 87: 1259-1276.
Farrell, J. (2007) ‘The Birth of The Psychoanalytic Hero: Freud’s Platonic Leonardo’, in Philosophy and Literature, 31: 233-254.
Freud, S. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (S.E.). James Strachey (Trans.). London: Hogarth.
—— (1905d) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S.E., VII: 123-546.
—— (1907c) The Sexual Enlightenment of Children. S.E., IX: 129-140.
—— (1908c) On the Sexual Theories of Children. S.E., IX: 205-226.
—— (1909b) Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy. S.E., X: 1-150.
—— (1910h) A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men (Contributions to the Psychology of Love I). S.E., XI: 163-176.
—— (1912e) Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-Analysis. S.E., XII: 109-120.
—— (1914c) On Narcissism: An Introduction. S.E., XIV: 67-102.
—— (1914d [1921]) Psycho-Analysis and Telepathy. S.E., XVIII: 173-194.
—— (1915b) Thoughts for the Times on War and Death. S.E., XIV: 273-300.
—— (1916-1917) Introductory Lectures. S.E., XV.
—— (1930) Civilisation and its Discontents. S.E., XXI: 57-146.
—— (1937c) Analysis Terminable and Interminable. S.E., XXIII: 209-254.