ABSTRACT
In this final chapter, I summarize the conclusions reached in my rethinking of Freud’s arguments in the Hans case study. In rejecting Freud’s arguments in defense of his Oedipal theory, my analysis leaves the Hans case to be explained by the fright theory or by attachment and family interaction issues, as I have suggested elsewhere (Wakefield, 2022). Moreover, it leaves Freud without a way to evade the accusation that the Oedipal theory is basically an ad hoc attempt to save his sexual theory of the neuroses, thus leads to the conclusion that Freud’s Oedipal theory and sexual theory of the neuroses became pseudoscientific after the Hans case. On the positive side, there is room for further development of a methodological understanding of when singular causal explanations of the type on which psychoanalytic interpretation relies can be considered valid. And, purged of Freud’s 1909 error in maintaining the Oedipal theory against the evidence, psychoanalysis can proceed in an unconstrained way to realize its potential as a science of idiographic meaning systems with a focus on problematic meanings out of focal awareness.
