Rat Man


 * For the Italian comic book character, see Rat-Man (comics)

"Rat Man" was a pseudonym given by Sigmund Freud to his patient Ernst Lanzer (1878-1914), to protect his anonymity when his case study was published.

Some Remarks on a Case of Obsessive-compulsive Neurosis
The case study was published in 1909 in German. Freud saw the Ratman for about a year, and considered the treatment a success.

The patient was presented with obsessional thoughts and with behaviors which he felt compelled to carry out. The case received its name from a torture he had heard about from a military officer, where rats would eat away at one's body. He then became obsessed that this might happen to someone who was dear to him, specifically his father or the woman he admired. Freud theorized that this and similar thoughts were produced by conflicts consisting of the combination of loving and aggressive impulses relating to these people.

The Ratman also often defended himself against his own thoughts. He would have a secret thought that he wished his father would die so he could inherit all of his money, and then he would shame himself by fantasizing that his father would die and leave him nothing. The patient even goes so far as to fantasize about marrying Freud's daughter so that Freud would have more money.

In addition, the symptoms were believed to keep the patient from needing to make difficult decisions in his current life, and to ward off the anxiety which would be involved in experiencing the angry and aggressive impulses directly. The patient's older sister and father had died, and these losses were considered, along with his suicidal thoughts and his tendency to form verbal associations and symbolic meanings.

Freud believed that they began with sexual experiences of infancy, in particular harsh punishment for childhood masturbation, and the vicissitudes of sexual curiosity. In the case study Freud elaborates on his terms rationalization, doubt, and displacement.

In a footnote Freud laments that long term follow-up of this case was not possible, because the patient was killed in World War I.

Criticism of Freud's interpretation
"The only known case in which Freud's notes survive is that of Ernst Lanzer, the Rat Man. Freud treated him for obsessions, particularly the dread that something terrible would happen to his father and his girlfriend. His fear of rats, Freud showed through elaborate interpretations, was based on disguised homosexual fantasies. Mr. Stadlen tracked down relatives of Mr. Lanzer who said the account handed down by the family was that Freud had helped him overcome shyness so that he could marry.

But Patrick Mahony, a psychoanalyst and professor of English at the University of Montreal, has discovered several discrepancies between Freud's own case notes and his published narrative of the treatment. His findings are in Freud and the Rat Man, published in 1986 by the Yale University Press.

Dr. Mahony said Freud seems to have twisted the actual course of the case a bit to better support his theoretical points. He also said Freud misrepresented some of the facts to make his deductive powers seem all the more impressive. For example, Freud said he had guessed the name of the Rat Man's girlfriend, Gisela, from an anagram, Glejisamen, that the patient had invented. Actually, the notes show Freud had learned her name first, and then used it to deduce the meaning of the anagram." []