ABSTRACT
This chapter systematically evaluates Freud’s use of the Suitability Argument to support his Oedipal theory in the Hans case history, using Freud’s own criteria for judging validity. Freud cites Oedipal suitability explanations of many features of Hans’s symptoms as indicating an Oedipal origin, including the diffuseness of his fears, the fact that Hans is afraid of horses with something black around their mouths (thus the claimed symbolic transfer onto the feared horses of Hans’s father’s moustache), the juxtaposition of fears of horses falling and biting, the fact that he is afraid of horses pulling full wagons, and so on. Freud also explains the power of mediating associations to incidents involving Fritzl and Lizzi by their link to Oedipal desires. Applying Freud’s own demanding requirements for a successful “Suitability Argument,” close analysis of each of Freud’s arguments reveals that the details of the phobia are adequately explained by Hans’s understandable reactions to the features of the horse accident itself and earlier sensitizing incidents. Thus, no successful Suitability Argument can be mounted in defense of Freud’s Oedipal explanation. Every salient feature of the phobia’s contents cited by Freud can plausibly be explained by horse-related events without the necessary involvement of Oedipal meanings.
