708340
Rat Man study (Freud, 1909)
- Aim: investigate the underlying cause of Ernst Lanzer's
obsessive-compulsive neurosis
- Method: Freud saw him for a year
- Obsessive and fearful thoughts about rats, leading to
obsessive behaviours
- From military training: heard of torture in which rats were put in bucket tied
to buttocks and ate their way out through anus
- Fear of this happening to father or woman he admired led to obsessive-compulsive behaviours
- Fear of this happening to father or woman he admired led to obsessive-compulsive behaviours
- From military training: heard of torture in which rats were put in bucket tied
to buttocks and ate their way out through anus
- Obsessive and fearful thoughts about rats, leading to
obsessive behaviours
- Results: behaviours came from love and unconscious hate for
father, who he wanted to torture with rats
- Conclusion: obsessive-compulsive behaviours
helped him overcome guilt and reduce anxieties
- Evaluation: Freud focused only on father, and ignored domineering mother
- Feelings of abandonment as a child might be a more plausible explanation
- Case study can't be generalised
- Feelings of abandonment as a child might be a more plausible explanation
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