Three Bizarre Psychological Cases
Sigmund Freud's Psychotherapy Treatment of the Rat Man & More
Sometimes psychological disorders go beyond depression or denial to bizarre, uncontrollable mental conditions. The Rat Man, Wolf Man, & Anna O. are Freud's famous cases.
Sigmund Freud was a psychoanalyst who favored a stream of consciousness therapy to tackle psychological disorders. The patient lay on a couch – even the bizarre psychological cases such as the Rat Man, Wolf Man, or Anna O – and talked about anything that came to mind, no matter how bizarre, frightening or dark. Freud experienced successes and failures (like everyone does); here are his three most bizarre psychology cases.
Freud's Bizarre Psychological Case #1: The Rat Man
The Rat Man was an army officer who heard a fellow officer describing an unorthodox form of punishment: strip a man naked and release the rats. Rats will gnaw and chew their way through the anus – and thus punish the offender. The Rat Man was deeply affected by this image and started to imagine this happening to his father and his girlfriend. He developed an obsession, a system, of preventing this from happening to his dad and girlfriend. The Rat Man wanted to protect them.
The fact that his dad had been dead for a few years and his girlfriend was safe from the war at home didn't seem to matter to the Rat Man. After many psychotherapy treatment sessions, Freud did find success. He helped the Rat Man shake off his obsession…only to be killed in WW I a year later.
Freud's Bizarre Psychological Case #2: The Wolf Man
The Wolf Man was a young Russian who was in touch with reality only after he'd relieved himself with an enema. The Wolf Man's intestines had to be empty before he could function properly. This was a famous bizarre psychological case of Freud's because he treated the boy inside the man – not the man himself. Freud interpreted the Russian's dream of wolves with foxes' tails as witnessing his mother and father having sex, and focused on this infantile neurosis.
The Wolf Man became too dependent on Freud, who set a psychotherapy treatment end date of one year. The Wolf Man made progress and Freud sent him home to Russia, cured. But after the Russian revolution, the Wolf Man made his way back to Freud, struggling as much as he was when he first underwent Freud's psychotherapy treatment.
Freud's Bizarre Psychological Case #3: Anna O
Anna O is probably Freud's most famous psychological disorder of all. She was hysterical, paralyzed, hydrophobic, and in love with her first therapist, Josef Breuer. He abruptly ended the therapy one day because his wife suspected there was more than counseling happening on the couch. Breuer was summoned to her bedside that same night as Anna O. experienced false labor. She thought she was pregnant with and delivering his child.
Freud used the process of catharsis to treat Anna O. He was successful; she became Germany's first social worker.
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