Disney and Psychology: Pepper Ann and Little Hans

Here's something I meant to write down before I forgot these two shows existed. 

(BEWARE! REFERENCE TO SEXUALITY)

Disney produced both Pepper Ann and The Weekenders, two shows about zany twelve year olds that were viciously popular and are sorely missed. One thing that struck me years ago was that Disney represented both sides of the psychology fear development war at different times. The Little Hans study and the Little Albert study have been at war since people starting asking how things make you feel.

I know what you're thinking... Disney and impartiality? Impossible. Perhaps not.

For all those who haven't taken Intro to Psych and only showed up for the exam:

The little Albert experiment, showing evidence of fear as a product of classical conditioning was conducted by John B Watson, and his genius bimbo/mistress Rosalie Rayner. 

The study involved a little boy named Albert being tortured with relentless noise as he played with a rat, causing him to be afraid of rats and other ratlike things until the experiment was reversed with positive conditioning, it was named "Little Albert to poke fun at the Little Hans case which despite having very little empirical value is fascinating nonetheless.

Anyway, it's crazy but in an episode, everyone discovers Tino's terrible fear of clowns when a clown convention comes to Bahia Bay, and through a series of flashbacks, it's determined that he developed the fear by being viciously kissed by his clown-resembling aunt in his childhood. Shazam, one for behavioral psychology.

One poor quality screenshot of The Weekenders coming up

On to Little Hans, the famous Freud case, where a young boy develops a chronic fear of horses shortly after being told that he wasn't allowed to masturbate. HA. Anyway, it turns out that the horse is a representation of his father who he truly fears because both the horse and his father have large penises, and Hans wouldn't be able to impregnate his mother, whom he secretly loved (infantile sexuality) until his penis was larger. NOW THAT IS SCIENCE! Anyway, there were a lot of factors at play but basically Freud was able to dispel the fear by helping him verbalize what his true fear was, and by telling him where babies come from. hahahahhaa

Damn the internet for not becoming popular until after Pepper Ann was cancelled. There are hardly enough pictures to go around.

Can you believe Disney supports this theory? All of the sudden I love Disney.

Anyway, Pepper Ann uses the Freudian theory of fear development when Nikki (I know this show is really old so I'll specify that she was the blonde one) reveals that she is uber-afraid of swans. It turns out that her fear of the swan was transfered from her fear of her mega-perfect sister.

Awesome.

So in the spirit of science I'll make my final deduction.

Pepper Ann > Weekenders, therefore Little Hans > Little Albert.

Thoughts?

A little taste of Little Hans

If anyone wants to borrow my Little Hans/The Rat Man case study I'm always happy to creep people out with infantile sexuality.