The Seduction Theory
In 1896, Freud published an article entitled, “The Aetiology of Hysteria,” (Gleaves & Hernandez, 1999). Within the paper, he presented his scarcely known “seduction theory,” which stated that the repression of memories from childhood, and sometimes infant, sexual trauma produced hysterical symptoms in teenage and adult individuals (generally women) (Gleaves & Hernandez, 1999). Moreover, Freud claimed that the only way to alleviate these symptoms was through “the retrieval and reliving of repressed memories,” (Gleaves & Hernandez, 1999).
Interestingly, however, within just a year of publishing this controversial article, Freud appeared to be having doubts about his theory. In a letter to close friend, Wilhelm Fliess, Freud wrote that a “great secret has been slowly dawning on me in the last few months,” (Gleaves & Hernandez, 1999). Reportedly, the great secret was that Freud no longer believed in his theory and was attempting to reorganize his theory on hysteria to better suit the evidence and research he had collected (Gleaves & Hernandez, 1999). In his new theory, which would eventually spawn what the psychological community recognizes as the Oedipus Complex, Freud argued that hysteria was caused by repressed memories of sexual fantasies, not memories of actual sexual abuse or trauma as he once believed (Gleaves & Hernandez, 1999).
Freud’s Doubts
In another letter to Fliess, dated September 1897, Freud expressed four general concerns and reasons for abandoning his theory (Gleaves & Hernandez, 1999; Aron, 2012). First, he referred to the fact that he could not bring resolution to any of his analyses nor could he explain partial successes (Gleaves & Hernandez, 1999; Aron, 2012). If his theory was correct...
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...eduction Theory? . . Retrieved April 4, 2014, from http://carlossakka.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/why-did-freud-abandon-his-seduction-theory-1of2/
Esterson, A. Jeffrey Masson and Freud's seduction theory: a new fable based on old myths. History of the Human Sciences, 11, 1-21.
Gleaves, D., & Hernandez, E. Recent Reformulations of Freud's Development and Abandonment of His Seduction Theory: Historical/Scientific Clarification or a Continued Assault on Truth? . History of Psychology, 2, 324-354.
Masson, J. M. (1984). The assault on truth: Freud's suppression of the seduction theory. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Sigmund Freud Biography. (2012, January 1). . Retrieved April 1, 2014, from http://www.egs.edu/library/sigmund-freud/biography/
Sigmund Freud. (1998, January 1). Retrieved April 2, 2014, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhfreu.html
Freud starts his report by informing the readers of the incompleteness of his analysis and preparing them for a fragmented case. He admits that though the two dreams of Dora were recorded immediately after his session, “the case history itself was only committed to writing from memory, after the treatment was at an end […] thus the record is not absolutely – phonographically - exact” (4). Already, it becomes clear that the case will be based off of potentially invalid information. Freud attempts to defend this cause of skepticism by stating that the recollection remained fresh and heightened in his mind by his personal interest in the case (4). Freud clearly recognizes the opportunity for criticism due to the lack of information and accompanying lack of validity in his arguments, but he’s more intent on completing the report and proving his sexual desire and dream interpretat...
The. Freud, S., 1962. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: Malady or Myth?
Freud S et al, 1995 The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908-1939., Belknap Press, Harvard University Press,ISBN 067415424X
It was eleven years later that Breuer and his assistant, Sigmund Freud, wrote a book on hysteria. In it they explained their theory: Every hysteria is the result of a traumatic experience, one that cannot be integrated into the person's understanding of the world. The emotions appropriate to the trauma are not expressed in any direct fashion, but do not simply evaporate: They express themselves in behaviors that in a weak, vague way offer a response to the trauma.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, also known as PTSD, was recognized as a disorder with specific symptoms and was added to the Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980. However, prior to this acknowledgement, father of psychology, Sigmund Freud, had already developed a theory on it. Freud’s Seduction theory states: “both forgotten childhood trauma and a variety of adult stresses could cause neurosis”, such as we have seen in Euripides’s Medea; in which Medea acted irrationally after having gone through traumatic events. Whether it was Freud in the 1890s or Euripides in 430 BC the idea that PTSD is present in one’s daily live has always been a suggestion.
“It is not through some libidinal investment, through some energy of desire that [seduction] acquires intensity, but through the pure form of gaming and bluffing” (Baudrillard, 164). It is beyond the commodification process that is manufactured to guarantee success. Its nature is elusive and though it may use sexuality-it is only as a means to an end. Baudrillard asserts that “if sex has a natural law, a pleasure principle, then seduction consists in denying that principle and replacing it with a rule, the arbitrary rule of a game.” (Baudrillard,
Contemporary Psychology, 36, 575-577. Freud, S. (1961). The Species of the World. The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. London: The Hogarths.
The psychoanalytic perspective grew out of subsequent psychoanalytic theories (1901, 1924, and 1940) following decades of interactions with clients with the use of an innovative procedure developed by Sigmund Freud that required lengthy verbal interactions with patients during which Freud probed deep into their lives. In a nutshell, the psychoanalytic perspective looked to explain personality, motivation, and psychological disorders by focussing on the influence of early childhood experiences, on unconscious motives and conflicts, and on the methods people use to cope with their sexual and aggressive urges. The Biological perspective on the other hand looks at the physiological bases of behaviour in humans and animals. It proposes that an organism’s functioning can be described in terms of the bodily structures and biochemical processes that cause behaviour. This paper attempts to examine the similarities and differences between the psychoanalytic perspective and the biological perspective with the key focus on the core assumptions and features of these perspectives as well as their individual strengths and weaknesses.
Freud’s approach trauma is based in the treatment of hysteria. According to Ringel and Brandell, Freud and Breuer, considered an “external event” as responsible of determining hysterical symptoms. The common component between hysteria and trauma is the outcome of fright. Freud and Breuer emphasis the importance of cathartic experience as a way of decreasing or vanishing the effect. The “cathartic method” that was developed by Breuer, assisted to release of inhibited emotions. Freud believed that the libido, necessary to be relished for the symptoms to be improved (p. 43).
Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 333.
Freud’s Psychodynamics and Child of Rage Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis maintains that children are neither good nor bad, and that human behavior is caused by two basic instincts possessed by all humans, which are sex and aggression. (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2012, p. 171)Click and drag to move These basic instincts are held within our unconscious minds, but have significant impact on our behavior. According to Freud’s psychodynamics, our behavior is influenced by unconscious motivation, which manifests during our psychosexual stages of development.
Freud, Sigmund. “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (“Dora”).” The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. Trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1995. 172-239.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian psychoanalyst in the twentieth century whose studies and interests were focused on psychosexual behavior, psychosocial behavior, and the unconscious. He blames incestual desires and acts on neurosis and believes neurotics were victimized and molested in their youth. Congruently, this is his explanation for sexual urges in children. He watched psychiatrists fail at inventions of electrical and chemical treatments for mental disorders, only for them to turn to treatments that followed concepts of psychoanalysis. Even though drugs diminish symptoms of suffering he believed psychoanalytic or talking therapy would truly restore a patient’s self-esteem and welfare. As quoted by Ernst G. Beier:
Freud originally attempted to explain the workings of the mind in terms of physiology and neurology ...(but)... quite early on in his treatment of patients with neurological disorders, Freud realised that symptoms which had no organic or bodily basis could imitate the real thing and that they were as real for the patient as if they had been neurologically caused. So he began to search for psychological explanations of these symptoms and ways of treating them.
Kuttner, Aldred Booth. “Sons and Lovers’: A Freudian Appreciation.” The Psychoanalytic Review. 3 (1916): 295-317. Rpt. In TCLC, Ed. Dennis Poupard. Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale, 1985. 277-282.