Little Hans

a landmark case of Sigmund Freud’s, illustrating the Oedipus complex. Freud traced a child’s phobia for horses to castration anxiety stemming from masturbation, to repressed death wishes toward the father, and to fear of retaliation owing to rivalry with the mother, with displacement of these emotions onto horses. Freud never actually met the boy but analyzed him through written communication with the father. The case was reported in “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy” (1909).

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Psychology term of the day

February 25th 2025

single-case design

an approach to the empirical study of a process that tracks a single unit (e.g., person, family, class, school, company) in depth over time. Specific types include the alternating treatments design, the multiple baseline design, the reversal design, and the withdrawal design. In other words, it is a within-subjects design with just one unit of analysis. For example, a researcher may use a single-case design for a small group of patients with a tic. After observing the patients and establishing the number of tics per hour, the researcher would then conduct an intervention and watch what happens over time, thus revealing the richness of any change. Such studies are useful for generating ideas for broader studies and for focusing on the microlevel concerns associated with a particular unit. However, data from these studies need to be evaluated carefully given the many potential threats to internal validity; there are also issues relating to the sampling of both the one unit and the process it undergoes. Also called N-of-1 design; N=1 design; single-participant design; single-subject (case) design.