Seduction theory

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Sigmund Freud , the founder of psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud's seduction theory is a theory put forward in the mid-1890s that deals with the origin, development and possible cure of hysteria and neuroses . According to the theory, repressed memories of experiencing sexual abuse or sexual harassment in early childhood are central to hysterical, obsessive, and neurotic symptoms.

Initially, when developing his theory, Freud assumed that his patients gave credible reports of actual sexual abuse and abuse that were responsible for their neuroses and other psychological problems. After a few years, Freud gave up this theory, which was much more scandalous at the time, because of sharp protests from the professional world (including at his lecture at the Vienna Association for Psychiatry and Neurology on April 21, 1896) and questioned his theory of seduction himself again. On September 21, 1897, he wrote to his friend Wilhelm Fließ that he no longer believed in his “Neurotica” and pursued the theory that memories of sexual abuse were de facto imaginary fantasies (see Oedipus Conflict ).

Freud's theory of seduction

On the evening of April 21, 1896, Freud presented his work with the title The Etiology of Hysteria to his college, Association for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna . Using a sample of 12 female and 6 male patients from his practice, he showed that they had all been victims of sexual assault by important caregivers and caregivers, and said that he could distinguish between three groups, depending on the origin of the sexual stimulation :

“The first group involves assassinations, one-off or isolated abuse of mostly female children on the part of adults, strange individuals (...), whereby the children's consent was out of the question and the horror prevailed as the next consequence of the experience. A second group is formed by the far more numerous cases in which an adult person waiting for the child - nanny, nanny, governess, teacher, unfortunately all too often a close relative - introduced the child to sexual intercourse and one - also trained in psychological direction - a formal love affair with him, often for years. Finally, the third group includes the actual child relationships, sexual relationships between two children of different sex, mostly between siblings, which are often continued beyond puberty and have the most lasting consequences for the couple in question. (...) Where there was a relationship between two children, it was possible to prove several times that the boy - who also plays the aggressive role here - had previously been seduced by an adult female (...) I am therefore inclined to assume that without previous seduction children are unable to find their way to acts of sexual aggression. "

- Freud (1896): On the etiology of hysteria. In: Study edition vol. 6, p. 68

The cause of the condition of his patients lies in trauma caused by the child's social environment. The source of the hysteria lies in an externally inflicted act of violence and not, as Freud postulates in his later theory of the Oedipus conflict , in inner-psychological conflicts between different instances of the personality . Freud names a broad spectrum of possible perpetrators, which he will later restrict in favor of father etiology .

Freud's theory of seduction emphasizes the causal influence of the formation of the mind through experience. According to her, hysteria and neuroses are caused by repressed memories of child sexual abuse. This is the premature introduction of sexuality into the child's world of experience, which leads to trauma because the associated affects and thoughts cannot be integrated. An adult who experiences normal, non-traumatic sexual development can assimilate sexual feelings into a continuous sense of self , as appropriate for their age , while those who have experienced abuse have memories, thoughts and feelings that appear incompatible with their general personality .

In the three writings on the theory of seduction, which were published in 1896, Freud wrote that he could see experiences of this kind in all of his patients at the time, mostly under the age of four. It is not stated in these writings that the patients themselves reported reports of such abuse in early childhood; rather, Freud used the analytical interpretation of the symptoms and associations of his patients in order to provoke a “reproduction” of the strongly repressed memories. At the same time, although he reported having been successful in these attempts, he admitted that his patients were generally not convinced that their experiences in the analysis actually demonstrated childhood sexual abuse. Freud's presentation of the seduction theory went through a number of changes over the years; the current version is the last version published in the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis .

Revocation of the seduction theory

Freud did not publish the reasons for revoking his theory of seduction in 1897 and 1898. In a letter of September 21, 1897 to his confidante Wilhelm Fliess , Freud justified his departure from the seduction theory with psychoanalytic doubts and elaborated on these motives: First, he referred to his inability to bring even a single analysis to a real conclusion, and the lack of complete success he had counted on. Second, he expressed his surprise that in all cases the father had to be accused of perversion in order to uphold his theory. Third, it seemed to him that the frequency of hysteria on the one hand could not possibly match the frequency of perversion towards children on the other.

In addition, Freud pointed out that the unconscious is incapable of distinguishing facts from fantasies . "I believe in my Neurotica no longer" it said in his letter of 21 September 1897. "He, Freud had taken the descriptions of patients at face value and see thereat as fact and fiction is blended again." In Unconscious, according to Freud, there is no sign of reality , so it is not possible to differentiate between truth and imagination, in which much emotion has been invested. (In this letter Freud wrote that his loss of faith in his theory would only become known to himself and Fliess, and in fact he did not make the abandonment of his theory public until 1906.)

The seduction theory was followed by the theory of infantile sexuality and the Oedipus conflict as an alternative explanation . According to this theory, the impulses, fantasies and conflicts that Freud had previously uncovered behind neurotic symptoms do not stem from external harmful influences, but rather ascribed them exclusively to the child's inner-psychological world.

literature

  • Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson : What did they do to you, you poor child? Sigmund Freud's suppression of the seduction theory . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-498-04284-X (English: The assault on truth. Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory . Translated by Barbara Brumm).

See also

  • Marianne Krüll , reconstructs the turning away from the seduction theory due to Freud's family dynamics, the "taboo of Jacob" (Freud and his father)
  • Jeffrey Masson , sharp critic of Freud's withdrawal from the seduction theory
  • Sandor Ferenczi's concept of the aggressor's introjection
  • Emma Eckstein , a prominent patient of Freud and later an analyst herself, who contributed material to the seduction theory
  • Jean Laplanche , took up Freud's theory and expanded it to the Théorie de la séduction généralisée

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Masson (ed.) (1985), p. 187; Jones, E. (1953). Sigmund Freud: Life and Work . Volume 1. London: Hogarth Press, p. 289; Clark, RW (1980). Freud: The Man and the Cause . Jonathan Cape, p. 156.
  2. ↑ Jahoda, M. (1977). Freud and the Dilemmas of Psychology . London: Hogarth Press, p. 28; Clark (1980) p. 156; Gay, P. (1988). Freud: A Life for Our Time , Norton, pp. 92-94.
  3. ↑ Jeffrey Masson: The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory . Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1984, ISBN 0-374-10642-8 German translation: What has been done to you, you poor child? Sigmund Freud's suppression of seduction theory , Reinbek bei Hamburg, (1st edition) 1984, ISBN 978-3-498-04284-4 .
  4. ^ Sándor Ferenczi: Confusion of language between adults and children. dissoziation-und-trauma.de , from: Sándor Ferenczi: Infantil-Attacks: About sexual violence, trauma and dissociation , Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-923211-36-4 (PDF, 150 pages, 1.6 MB) .
  5. ↑ Jeffrey M. Massons: The revocation of the abuse theory ("seduction theory") by Sigmund Freud. Rudolf Sponsel, Department of Critical Work on Psychoanalysis and Analytical Psychotherapy. IP-GIPT. Gain.
  6. ↑ Christian Pape: The human being has probably never been as humiliated as it was through psychoanalysis. University of Vienna, diploma thesis, p. 20 (PDF, 150 p., 3.2 MB) .
  7. ↑ Jahoda (1977), p. 28; Gay (1988) p. 96.
  8. ^ Letter to Fliess dated December 12, 1897; quoted in Masson 1984, p. 137
  9. ↑ Masson (ed) 1985, pp. 141, 144; Schimek (1987); Smith (1991), pp. 7 f.
  10. ↑ Mitchell, SA, & Black, MJ (1995). Freud and Beyond: a history of modern psychoanalytic thought. Basic Books, New York
  11. ↑ Masson (1984), pp. 276, 281; Garcia (1987); Schimek (1987); Israëls & Schatzman (1993); Salyard, A. (1994), On Not Knowing What You Know: Object-coercive Doubting and Freud's Announcement of the Seduction Theory, Psychoanalytic Review , 81 (4), pp. 659-676.
  12. ↑ Schimek (1987); Smith, DL (1991). Hidden Conversations: An Introduction to Communicative Psychoanalysis , Routledge, pp. 9 f .; Toews, JE (1991). Historicizing Psychoanalysis: Freud in His Time and for Our Time, Journal of Modern History , vol. 63 (pp. 504-545), p. 510, n.12; McNally, RJ (2003), Remembering Trauma , Harvard University Press, pp. 159-169.
  13. ^ Masson (1984), p. 273; Paul, RA (1985). Freud and the Seduction Theory: A Critical Examination of Masson's "The Assault on" Truth ", Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology , vol. 8, pp. 161-187; Garcia (1987); Schimek, (1987); Eissler, (2001) , pp. 114-116.
  14. ↑ Schimek, (1987); Israëls & Schatzman (1993); Salyard, A. (1994); Esterson, A. (2001).
  15. ^ Gasser, Reinhard: Nietsche and Freud. Berlin: de Gruyter 1997, p. 421
  16. ↑ Masson (ed.) (1985), pp. 264-266; Masson (1984), pp. 108-110; Israëls and Schatzman, (1993).
  17. ^ Masson (ed.) (1985), p. 265; Masson (1984) p. 109.
  18. ↑ Israëls and Schatzman (1993); Esterson, A. (2001).
  19. ↑ In: http://www.mariannekruell.de/schriftstellerin/vt-freud83-93.htm