Treatment Fallacy Psychology

The snake represents her mother in some way, so when faced with one she feels fear, but as these feelings are in the unconscious mind, she cannot express the reasons why. These memories are personal to Anna so Bjorn does not express the same fear. However, this study lacks temporal validity because it was conducted over a hundred years ago, and since then psychologists have developed opposing theories with higher levels of accuracy. Also, the study raises the issue of treatment fallacy as although the psychoanalytic therapy worked for Hans, this does not mean that the main cause was dealt with, meaning an alternative cause was more likely the reason behind the phobia. The study of Little Hans cannot be generalised to the whole population as …show more content…
He also developed the idea of schemes, of which we are born with and add to during life whilst learning from our environment in a process known as assimilation (Mitchell & Ziegler, 2013). From this, he came up with a set of fixed stages of which children must complete to fully socially develop. The second stage, the preoperational period, occurs between the ages of 2 and 6, and the third stage, the concrete operational period, is from 7 to 12 years old. The difference between these two stages is the development of logical thinking and principled thought. The age ranges are only used as a guideline and can be slightly different in reality. Anna hasn’t proceeded to the third stage, and has not yet developed logic which is needed to overcome fear. Therefore, any negative thoughts towards snakes, which normally could be rationalised in a more advanced stage, would be converted into a panic response leading to the fear. Bjorn has already completed the second stage and used logic to justify the dangers of a snake. A study using three sets of differently aged children, gave them a questionnaire to analyse the different types of fears they experience. They found that “Percentages of