In this close reading of Freudian theory, Jerome C. Wakefield reconstructs Freud’s argument for the Oedipal theory of the psychoneuroses, placing the case of Little Hans into a philosophy-of-science context and critically rethinking the epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis. Wakefield logically evaluates four central Freudian arguments: the 'undirected anxiety' argument which contends that Hans suffered from anxiety before he developed his horse phobia; the 'day the horse fell down' argument where, engaging in some scholarly detective work, Wakefield resolves a century-old dispute between behaviorists and psychoanalysts about when Hans witnessed a frightening horse accident; the 'N=1 sexual repression' argument that the trajectory of Hans’s sexual desires matches the Oedipal theory’s predictions; and lastly, the 'detailed symptom characteristics' argument that the Oedipal theory is needed to understand otherwise inexplicable details of Hans’s symptoms. Wakefield demonstrates