freud Flashcards
what was the aim of the study
to gather evidence to prove his theory of psychosexual development but to also bring about positive change for his participant
what method did freud use and who was his participant
case study with a longitudinal design
participant was little hans (aged 3-5)
describe the procedure
freud studied little hans’ everyday life through observation and self report which was collected by his dad (who was a fan of freud’s ideas).
he’d write everything in a letter and send it to freud who would analyse the content and write back (qualitative and secondary data)
give three identified behaviours and explanations found
hans had a fear of big, white horses with a black mouth black blinkers. the horse symbolises his father- who was white, wears glasses and has facial hair. he also associates horses as being big with a big widdler- he describes his dad in the same way. he displaced his fear of his dad with a fear of horses which he could easily avoid
hans asked his mother why she did not powder his penis- gratification is centred around the genital area and his mum is the product of his desires so he wants her to provide him with satisfaction.
hans has a dream of tajubg a crumpled (smaller) giraffe away from a bigger one. he sits on the crumpled giraffe and the big one shouts at him- represents hans possessing his mum as a result of the oedipus complex and his father objecting to this
give an example of how an event may be interpreted differently than how freud explained it
hans fear of white horses with a black mouth and black blinkers could be explained through conditioning (behaviourist perspective)
perhaps he saw an accident on the street as horses were the main mode of transportation at the time so he was conditioned into fearing horses
what did freud conclude
hans suffered with a phobia of horses because he was suffering from castration anxiety and was going through the oedipus complex.
dreams and fantasies helped him to express his conflict and eventually he overcame the oedipus complex by identifying with his father
comment on the use of a case study
+lots of depth and detail
-difficult to generalise to the wider population
-researcher bias due to the relationship built
comment on the use of self report
+better insight as this is the only way to access thoughts and things like dreams
-children are more vulnerable to leading questions
- might show social desirability as hans’ father was a fan of freuds ideas so may have altered data to fit his theory
-young children cannot properly articulate what they are actually thinking due to limited speech which may affect validity of results
comment on the way data was collected
+qualitative data provides a better insight due to lots of depth and detail
-qualitative data is difficult to analyse as it is subjective to opinion- you cannot perform statistical tests to strengthen results and conclusions
comment on the ethics of the study
+ use of a pseudonym so confidentiality was adhered to
+parental consent gained
-we may question pop due to an invasion of privacy
- no consent was gained from the child- he might have felt pressured to participate because his father, who was his authority figure, collected the data
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comment on the sample
-only one participant so difficult to generalise to the wider population
-one male 3-5 year old is not a representative sample
comment on the usefulness of the study
+ shows evidence for freuds psychosexual stage theory
how could freud have improved his study
-primary data instead of secondary
-have more than one researcher to cross check interpretations and establish inter rater reliability
-use a larger, more representative sample e.g boys and girls from different cultures and are in different psychosexual stages
