"Rat Man" was the nickname given by Sigmund Freud to a patient whose 'case history' was published as Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose (1909). The nickname derives from the fact that the patient developed a series of obsessive phantasies in which, In Freud's words, "rats had acquired a series of symbolic meanings, to which...fresh ones were continually being added".
To protect the anonymity of patients, psychoanalytic case-studies would usually withhold or disguise the names of the individuals concerned ('Anna O'; 'Little Hans'; 'Wolf Man', etc.). Recent researchers have decided that the "Rat Man" was in fact a clever lawyer named Ernst Lanzer (1878–1914)—though many other sources maintain that the man's name was Paul Lorenz.
Read more about Rat Man: 'Notes Upon A Case of Obsessional Neurosis', Influence, Criticism of Freud
Famous quotes containing the words rat and/or man:
“I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.”
—Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)
“The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)