A history of Wolf Man, a client of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

Alongside the cases of Anna O and Little Hans, the life of a man known
as “Wolf Man” helped to popularise Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic
approach which emphasized the significance of events earlier in life and
their impact on our wellbeing as we grow older.

Psychodynamic Approach

Freud learned of Wolf Man’s development of an irrational fear of animals

- even butterflies - as a child and believed that he could identify the
traumas which had led to this fear, along with other issues such as
obsessive religious practise and castration anxiety. After a long period of
sessions with Freud, the psychoanalyst published Wolf Man’s case
history in From the History of an Infantile Neurosis in 1918.

Who was the Wolf Man?

Sergei Pankejeff (1886-1979), or the ‘Wolf Man’, as he came to be

known, was one of Freud’s most famous patients.

A Russian of noble birth, Pankejeff was 23 years old when he began his
treatment with Freud in February 1910.

He was in a state of complete mental collapse. A nervous breakdown

some years earlier, followed by the suicides of his father and sister, had
left him severely depressed.

He was unable to travel alone, or even to dress himself, and felt as though
he was cut off from the world by a veil.

Freud published an account of his work with Pankejeff. It only gives a

partial account of the work, mostly focusing on Pankejeff’s childhood.

Freud’s aim was to show that adult suffering is rooted in childhood

conflicts, and that a key factor in this is sexuality.

A curious childhood

As Pankejeff described his early years to Freud, the story of a curious

and troubled childhood began to emerge.
His family were aristocrats. They lived on a large country estate, and
peasants worked the land – a fairly typical situation in pre-revolution
Russia.

His father suffered from depression and alcoholism, and his mother from
abdominal problems. He had a difficult relationship with his sister, who
was two years older than him. He was looked after by his nanny, who he
was very fond of.

Initially a quiet, good-natured boy, from the age of three his character
underwent a series of dramatic transformations:

 First he became irritable and prone to tantrums

 Next came a period of severe anxiety and phobias
 Finally, this transformed into several years of obsessive religious
piety

Wolf Man was Freud’s pseudonym for Dr. Sergeï Pankejeff, who was
born in St Petersburg, Russia in 1886, the youngest of two siblings. His
health had deteriorated after he had suffered from gonorrhea aged
eighteen and he eventually felt unable to pass bowel movements without
the assistance of an enema.

He also felt as though he was separated from the outside world by a

veil and had become unable to function normally without assistance by
the time his physician referred him to Freud in 1910.

Wolf Man’s sessions began in February of the same year and,

following persuasion from Freud, he agreed that their sessions would
continue only up to a set date. Freud believed that this would motivate his
client to lower his resistance and to cooperate more than if they were to
see each other indefinitely. In the event, though, their sessions would
continue intermittently for many years beyond the date agreed.

Freud investigated Wolf Man’s childhood and youth in an attempt to

trace his symptoms to events in his youth. He discovered that the man
had been born into a relatively happy marriage, until health problems
began to affect both parents. His mother began to suffer from abdominal
problems, whilst his father experienced bouts of depression. He would be
missing from the family home for periods of time as a result, with Wolf
Man only learning the reason for this when he grew older.
As a child, Wolf Man was initially a calm, quiet character. As a result of
this, and his sister’s boisterous behavior, he recalled having been told that
he should have born in his sister’s place and she in his.

However, the boy’s parents found a dramatic change in his attitude when
they returned from holiday on one occasion. The boy had become
argumentative, irritable and sometimes violent. His parents suspected that
this was a result of the new English governess who had begun caring for
the children: known to enjoy a drink, the woman argued with the nanny,
with Wolf Man opting to side with the latter, whom he held in great
esteem. This disruptive aspect of his personality lasted until he was
around eight years of age.

Irrational Fears and Rituals

Further irrational behavior affected Wolf Man as a child. He developed a

fear of wolves and was teased by his sister who would upset him with an
illustration of the animal from a book. But this fear was not limited to
wolves - beetles and caterpillars also became a source of anxiety for him.
Freud recounted one occasion when Wolf Man was pursuing a butterfly,
and whilst doing so, became afraid of butterflies, forcing him to cease his
chase.

This fear of animals, which had emerged as he approached the age of

four, caused some confusion to Freud, as he learnt that the boy had
simultaneously taunted caterpillars, cutting them into pieces, and was
violent towards horses, without fearing them.

Upto the age of around ten, Wolf Man also became unusually zealous in
his religious worship and developed a nightly routine of praying and
kissing any icons in the house. Blasphemous thoughts entered his head
and a strange association occurred: the sight of horse manure in the road
would result in religious thoughts. A fear of turning into the aging men or
beggars who he passed in the street resulted in him creating a ritual of
breathing out in an exaggerated fashion as he passed them.

Understandably, Freud was keen to understand the impact, if any, of Wolf

Man’s relationship with his parents, sister and the governess had on this
unusual behavior.
Relations between the governess and Wolf Man had initially been
difficult, with her insulting his nanny and he feeling the need to side with
the latter. But had this been the cause of his anxieties?

Freud believed that the man had developed “castration anxiety” as a

result of numerous childhood events. Firstly, he had recalled the
governess giving him chopped sugar sweet sticks, which she had
described as resembling snakes that had been cut up. Wolf Man had also
been told the story of Reynard, a cunning mythical fox who lost his tail in
the ice whilst using it as hunting bait. Freud also identified Wolf Man
witnessing his father chopping a snake into pieces whilst out walking, as
a possible source of this irrational castration anxiety, which may have led
to his fear of horses and caterpillars, owing to their phallic shape.

A fear of emasculation, linked to this castration anxiety, may also have

resulted from Wolf Man’s incestuous relations with his sister. The two
would become good friends, but Wolf Man later made advances towards
her which, Freud noted, were rejected, and the desire that he felt may
have lead to repressed feelings of guilt. Freud believed that Wolf Man’s
later preference for girls lower in social stature and intelligence (which
his sister was praised for, to envy of her brother) was a result of him
attempting to fulfil his affection for his sister with another, less
threatening, woman.

White Wolves Dream

During his sessions with Freud, Wolf Man would describe the contents of
his dreams to his therapist, allowing for their interpretation. The most
significant dream involved white wolves, earning his pseudonym from
Freud:

Wolf Man was in bed when he was suddenly awoken and, looking out of
the bedroom window, he saw six or seven white wolves sat in a walnut
tree outside, focussed on him. Certain features of the wolves resembled
those of other animals - their tails, for example, were more like those of
foxes than of wolves.
Afraid of the wolves entering his bedroom and attacking him, Wolf Man
awoke and had to be reassured that he the dream was just that before he
could return to sleep comfortably.

What was the significance of the wolves in the dream and Wolf Man’s
fear of the animals?

Freud linked the dream to a story that the man’s grandfather had told him,
in which a pack of wolves are pursuing a person and one allows the
others to climb it in order to reach their victim. He attributed the loss of
the wolves’ normal tails to the castration anxiety that he had identified in
his patient. Moreover, he believed that the man’s relationship with his
father was a source of his anxieties.

Wolf Man had admired his father as a “gentleman” role model, and the
two had enjoyed a close relationship whilst he was young. However, the
father’s depression did not help their relations and he grew closer to Wolf
Man’s sister. Freud believed that Wolf Man had developed a fear of his
father, and that his misbehavior as a child was a masochistic attempt to be
beaten by him. His father had, however, resisted reprimanding his son,
attempting instead to reconcile with him.

According to Freud, this refusal to fulfill Wolf Man’s intentions lead to

this desire being repressed and may have been the source of his anxiety.
As a result, Wolf Man’s subconscious preoccupation with the wolves
may have in fact been the threatening representation of his father that he
had in mind when he misbehaved.

Despite Freud’s interpretation of Wolf Man’s condition, he continued to

suffer beyond the cut-off date originally set by Freud, and would to visit
him intermittently for many years, along with other therapists. His sister
committed suicide after complaining of maltreatment by an older woman
who she went travelling with and his father died a year later. Living until
the age of 92, Wolf Man would excel in a range of artistic endeavours,
and even recounted his white wolves dream in a 1964 painting
entitled My Dream.1