THE EARLY PERIOD: FREUD’S THEORY OF SEDUCTION
It was into this socio-cultural environment that Freud moved. In 1885, while finishing his medical studies, he made a several-month study trip to
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This discovery set the stage for his work on child sexual abuse. By 1896, Freud had formalized his theory on the etiology of hysteria, which he presented to his colleagues in a group of three papers entitled, “The Aetiology of Hysteria”. In these papers he presented a sample of 18 patients, labeled hysterical, who he concluded had been victims of childhood sexual assault by various caregivers. In these three papers he further suggested that the abuse itself was responsible for the victims’ significant psychopathology (neuroses).
These papers, however, offered contradictory information concerning the identify of the perpetrators. He variously implicated teachers and female caretakers (but not mothers), and same-age, opposite-sex children such as brothers. Only later, in his private letters to Wilhelm Fliess, his good friend, did he suggest that fathers were most often the offenders.
Rejection of the Theory of Seduction
Freud’s colleagues, including Charcot, who “found it preposterous that parents would molest their own children”, frankly rejected his theory, a rejection that continued as long as Freud embraced his seduction theory. As Masson states, “In accepting the reality of seduction, in believing his patients, Freud was at odds with the entire climate of German medical thinking”. It is perhaps not surprising then, that by 1897 Freud had repudiated his own observations. In his now famous letter, he announced to Fliess, “I no longer believe in my neurotica.” Freud now believed that most, but not all, of the assaults he reported had never occurred. He instead suggested that the young child, needing to release sexual tensions, wished for the sexual attention from her father. He believed that these tensions were universal and unfolded in developmental stages.
Having replaced his theory having a universal external etiology with a theory having a universal internal etiology, Freud then advanced his theory of the Oedipus complex, which became a “universal and intrapsychic rather than environmental hazard for emotional health.” According to the Oedipus complex, the female child initially takes her mother as her love object. When the child sees the male genitalia, however, she immediately recognizes it as superior and consequently falls victim to penis envy. Her father now becomes her new love object. It is during this stage, Freud hypothesized, that girls create incestuous fantasies of themselves with their fathers. Freud therefore came to believe that reported cases of incest were simply wishful fantasies for the love object. As Hare-Mustin states, “patients are made ill by their fantasies, not by what happens to them”.
Rationale for Freud’s Reversal
What could have caused Freud’s complete reversal of thought in such a short time? As the impact of Freud’s reversal has become recognized, different authors have forwarded rationales. This literature, however, often reflects the ideological background of the writer, with psychoanalytically trained professionals sometimes being more muted in their opinions and feminist writers being more provocative. Nonetheless, at least five rationales for his reversal have been forwarded.
The Effect of Professional Censure
When Freud first forwarded his seduction theory, he was young in his career, and the opinion of his colleagues probably mattered greatly. His theory of seduction was considered unpopular at the least and, more likely, outrageous. Perhaps an analogy of the pressure Freud might have felt to rescind his theory can be educed from the current environment. Even today, in an age far more enlightened than the one in which Freud lived, the backlash against a full knowledge of child sexual abuse is great. Professionals have been attacked, sometimes with serious repercussions. These attacks have occurred even though the scope of child sexual abuse is undeniable. Freud, however, was one of the few professionals of his era suggesting that “hysteria” was a result of actual incidents of sexual abuse. Because Freud’s young professional reputation appeared to be at stake, he may have felt extreme pressure to rescind his theory.
Freud’s Unresolved Issues
Another rationale for Freud’s renunciation of his seduction theory was forwarded by Westerlund. After analyzing Freud’s letters and other historical writings, she suggested that Freud, after recognizing the existence of certain hysterical features in his brother and several sisters, was on the verge of discovering that his father might have sexually abused one or more of them. In the same letter to Fliess in which he recanted his theory, Freud stated, “In all cases, the father, not excluding my own, had to be accused of being perverse”.
How can this statement be interpreted? Westerlund interprets it to mean that Freud’s father may have been guilty of incest. The context, within which this letter was written, however, must be considered. Freud had recently presented a theory in which most or all hysteria was reported to result from a childhood history of sexual abuse. It is especially obvious today that current symptomatology is not always the result of child sexual abuse. Perhaps because he had developed a theory of hysteria based only upon a history of child sexual abuse, Freud found himself in the awkward position of having to defend the position that all individuals with hysterical features were previously sexually abused. As Armstrong puts it, “Incest was the (sole) cause of female neurosis, thus female ‘neurotics’ must have experienced incest’. Unable to reconcile this apparent conflict, Freud may instead have had impetus to abandon his theory.
It was also during this time that Freud experienced overly affectionate feelings towards his daughter and reported a dream to Fliess in which these feelings occurred. While Westerlund states that these were incestuous feelings, Freud suggested that as they were in a dream, they were symbolic of his need to suggest that the father was responsible for neurosis. There is some question whether Freud’s “shocking” behavior towards his niece was also perhaps erotic in nature. Westerlund cites Jones, Freud’s biographer, as stating that it is likely that the cruel behavior with which Freud and his nephew treated his niece had some likely erotic component.
These three experiences, while equivocal, lend weight to Westerlund’s argument that by endorsing a theory in which hysterical symptoms resulted from sexual abuse experiences, Freud may have come dangerously close to acknowledging a side of himself and his father with which he was most uncomfortable. Freud may have had significant personal issues with his original theory because of his own father’s possible perpetration, his brother’s and sisters’ neurotic symptomatology, or his own possible erotic feelings. Westerlund hypothesizes that only by creating the Oedipus complex was Freud able to resolve the very personal nature of his original seduction theory.
Universality of Abuse
Another factor that may have contributed to Freud’s renunciation of the seduction theory becomes apparent in one of his letters to Fliess, in which Freud struggles to accept that fathers-and not just a few-could commit acts of incest. As he stated, “The astonishing thing [was] that in every case blame was laid on perverse acts by the father … though it was hardly credible that perverted acts against children were so general.” As will be discussed later, Olafson, Corwin, and
Theory of Periodicity
One of the more entertaining, although probably no less factual, rationales for Freud’s renunciation pertains to a series of events involving Freud, one of his good friends, and one of his patients. While the following is not so much a rationale for rejecting his theory of seduction, it does give an interesting view of the process by which this reversal may have occurred. The following is a brief summary from Masson’s book on Freud’s renunciation of the seduction theory.
In the early years of his professional life, Freud worked with a patient, Emma Eckstein, who had been sexually abused as a child by her father. This trauma, Freud argued, was responsible for her hysteria. At the time, Freud was good friends with Wilhelm Fliess, a physician who was advancing a theory, perhaps not unusual for its time, that the nose was the center of sexual feelings and that an operation on the nose could correct sexual dysfunction, especially the desire to masturbate. Evidently, Ms. Eckstein may have had this desire, although it is not certain. Regardless, Fliess wanted to operate, and Freud consented.
Fliess had never performed this operation before and apparently made serious mistakes. After Ms. Eckstein had a severe and life-threatening hemorrhage, another physician reoperated on her nose and found that Fliess had inadvertently left a piece of gauze in her nose, causing the subsequent infection and hemorrhage. In Freud’s first letter to Fliess after this second operation, Freud was obviously concerned about the error, but already appeared to be rationalizing it. In this letter, Freud said that Fliess had done the best he could and that it was an unfortunate accident. Although Freud expressed concern for his patient, he was “inconsolable” about Fliess’ part in the affair.
This incident markedly strained the relationship of the two men. Freud seemed to need to reconcile this experience so that the operation, and his approval of it, could be justified. The more letters that were written between the two, the softer the recriminations became.
Finally the men, relying on another of Fliess’ theories-the theory of periodicity-began to alter the reality of the operation. This theory states that the numbers 28 (the female period) and 23 (the male period) are critical numbers and that all events in a person’s life are determined by these numbers. Within 15 months of the operation, Freud and Fliess had begun to dismiss Fliess’ culpability for the operation. Instead, they now believed that Ms. Eckstein would have bled anyway, as the operation fell on a critical date.
Nine months later, Freud dismissed the event further by stating that the bleeding was a result of Ms. Eckstein’s “wish to have Freud by her side” and “her own perverse imagination”. As Freud stated in his letter to Fliess, “As far as the blood is concerned, you are completely without blame!”. Freud now had reason to state that hysteria was not caused by real events, but by fantasized events. Perhaps it was a small step, then, to state not only that Ms. Eckstein’s abuse was an incestuous fantasy, but that all female children have incestuous fantasies. As Masson states: From 1894 through 1897, no subjects so preoccupied Freud as the reality of seduction and the fate of Emma Eckstein. The two topics seemed bound together. It is, in my opinion, no coincidence that once Freud had determined that Emma Eckstein’s hemorrhages were hysterical, the result of sexual fantasies, he was free to abandon the seduction hypothesis.
Psychoanalytic Perspective
All viewpoints discussed to this point are antagonistic to Freud’s renunciation. Other viewpoints in the professional literature, mostly by psychoanalysts, are more sympathetic to Freud’s renunciation. These viewpoints provide a balance to the literature presented thus far. Both Powell and Boer and Tabin, among others, take issue with the previous viewpoints, suggesting instead that Freud had important reasons for abandoning his seduction theory. Tabin first points out that only two of the 18 cases upon which the original seduction theory was based could be corroborated.
The patients’ disclosures themselves were often not willingly forthcoming, and Powell and Boer even suggest that the abuse memories were confabulations brought on by Freud’s use of strongly suggestible statements. As Tabin states, “His patients were not pleading from the couch that he accept their accounts of abuse in childhood. Furthermore, none of his cases showed any benefit from his interpretation that he could not otherwise explain in conventional terms. Indeed, these patients all fled from treatment”. As reported in a letter to Fliess in 1897, Freud returned from vacation only to discover that he had no patients, after which he felt resigned to surrender “his dream that his theory would win him eternal fame”.
The second major point of Tabin is that Freud continued throughout his lifetime to be aware not only of the childhood histories of sexual abuse in certain of his patients, but also its consequences. Thus, while he continued to attach greatest meaning to intrapsychic phenomena, he did not ignore the actual events.
Different authors have presented rationales for Freud’s renunciation of his theory of seduction. One very possible rationale is that Freud advanced this theory in an era that was not amenable to its acceptance. Because of the response of his colleagues and the newness of his practice, he may have felt great pressure to rescind the theory. To accept the theory may also have meant his acceptance of his own father’s “perverted” acts and that he would have to look closer at his own possible sexual feelings towards his daughter and niece.
Finally, to admit that so many of his hysterical patients were also victims of child sexual abuse would force him to accept a far greater prevalence of child sexual abuse than was comfortable. The actual rationales for Freud’s renunciation must be left for historians to decide. Awesome societal forces framed the environment in which Freud repudiated his theory. Given the socio-cultural environment in which Freud lived, the far easier path was to renounce his theory of seduction and to embrace a theory that his colleagues and society could tolerate.
It is interesting to speculate how the professional response to child sexual abuse in the following decades might have differed had Freud strongly held to his original position. Perhaps the best way to frame what might have been is as a paradigm shift. Kuhn conceptualizes paradigm shifts as scientific revolutions initiated by the introduction of a theory that does not just rework what is already known, but requires a complete reconstruction and re-evaluation of prior knowledge.
Because new paradigms confront the established paradigm, however, they are not readily accepted into the developing knowledge base. Indeed, many scientists who have introduced these paradigm shifts have been censured, and future generations have been left to resurrect their work.
Surely, with Freud’s developing reputation, had he held to his theory of seduction, he might have initiated a scientific revolution of sorts in the understanding and conceptualization of child sexual abuse. Because of the societal forces already in place, however, even had Freud defended his theory of seduction, it might have been rejected by his colleagues for some time to come. Yet Freud did not choose this path, but instead bowed to pressure. By renouncing the seduction theory, he rationalized the perverted acts away, and they disappeared into thin air as the overactive imagination of a young child whose incestuous wish is played out through an incestuous fantasy.
