Phobic Disorders - Psychodynamic Explanations of Phobic Disorders

AO1	AO2
Freud was the first to offer a psychological explanation for the origins of phobias. He proposed that a phobia was the conscious expression of repressed conflicts. The ego deals with conflict by protecting itself and repressing the emotions into the unconscious. Freud demonstrated his explanation with the case study of Little Hans who had become terrified of horses pulling a laden cart.	Research support – therapies that simply target the symptoms of phobia, are not 100% successful, this is perhaps because they fail to deal with the underlying causes of the phobias.
	There is a tendency in this approach to suggest that phobias can be reduced to a simple set of principles such as repressed anxieties.  Therefore it is reductionist, but this means that other possibilities will not be looked at. It is likely that the ‘real’ explanations are likely to be a combination of a number of different explanations.
Hans had become terrified of horses pulling a laden cart. Freud suggested that Hans' phobia had developed for several reasons: Firstly: Hans once heard a mad saying to a child "Don't put your finger to the white horse or it'll bite you". Hans once asked his mother if she would like to put her finger on his penis. His mother told him this would not be proper, leading Hans to worry that his mother might leave him. Hans projected once source of anxiety onto another - he became afraid of being bitten by a white horse, when in fact he was scared that his mother would leave him. Secondly: Hans saw a horse with a laden cart fall down and thought it was dead. The horse symbolised his wish that his father would die and the laden cart symbolised his mother pregnant with his sister, and when it fell over this was like giving birth. Therefore, the laden cart symbolised his father dying and his mother giving birth - both events that filled him with anxiety.	Little Hans - Only one piece of evidence to support the explanation. This case study could just as easily be explained using classical conditioning.
	Little Hans - Concerns one individual, so cannot be generalised to the wider population. Also, there is a lack of objectivity as both Hans’ father and Freud interpreted the evidence according to their expectations of the origins of phobias.