Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen - Neurotica Freud and The Seduction Theory

Neurotica: Freud and the Seduction Theory
Author(s): Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen and Douglas Brick

Reviewed work(s):
Source: October, Vol. 76 (Spring, 1996), pp. 15-43
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778771 .
Accessed: 24/11/2012 18:05
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.228 on Sat, 24 Nov 2012 18:05:24 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Neurotica:
Freud and the Seduction Theory*
MIKKEL BORCH-JACOBSEN
TranslatedbyDouglas Brick
1. Etymologically,
the infantis an animal withoutlanguage: infans,it does
not speak. Or, if it speaks, it babbles, makingup stories,speakingillogicallyand
How then could a child be takenas a qualifiedwitness?How could we
irrationally.
for
believe,
example,ifhe told us he had witnesseda crimeor had been molested?
on
the
other hand, how can we prove that he is not tellingthe truth?Old
But,
debate, quite insoluble.The child, like the idiot or the hypnotizedperson, is the
not because he alwayslies (if only!),but because
unreliablewitnesspar excellence;
withoutexternalcorroboration,it is as impossibleto prove he is tellingthe truth
as it is to provethe contrary.
And yet,as soon as he speaks, his speech must be judged. True or false?
Since thereis no real basis fora decision,the decision is bound to be a matterof
and as such, perfectlyarbitraryand unjustifiable.How
beliefand interpretation,
been
have
thus
accused of lettingcriminalsoffthe hook or, on the
manyjuries
of
innocents?
Some in the UnitedStatesare outragedbythe
contrary, condemning
of
at
the
McMartin
the
teachers
Preschool,who were accused of sexually
acquittal
in
their
the
children
abusing
put
charge. Others,in Great Britain,are indignant
about the Cleveland case, in which pediatricians and social workerstook 121
childrenawayfromtheirparentson mere suspicionof sexual abuse.
We are told thatthisis the sortof situationthatconfrontedSigmundFreud
in his elaboration and abandonment of the so-called seduction theory.Having
begun by believing his hysterics,who told him that they had been raped or
"seduced" during their earlyinfancy,he finallydecided, in September of 1897,
that these stories arose from the realm of fantasy,that theywere part of the
properlyfantasticspeech of the child within.Here is what he himselfhad to say
about thisin 1933:
In the period in which the main interestwas directed to discovering
infantilesexual traumas,almostall mywomenpatientstoldme thatthey
had been seduced by theirfather.I was drivento recognizein the end
This essaywas originallydeliveredas a lecture (except forsection 2) in March 1994 at All Souls
College, Oxford,at the invitationof Malcolm Bowie. It was translatedin collaborationwiththe author.
Institute
OCTOBER 76,Spring1996,pp. 15-43. ? 1996 October
Magazine,Ltd.and Massachusetts
ofTechnology.
16
OCTOBER
thatthesereportswereuntrueand so came to understandthathysterical

are derivedfromphantasiesand notfromreal occurrences.l
symptoms
Yes, but is there any proof that this reallywas the case? Afterall, some feminists
and child-abusespecialistsobject, is it not possible thatthese womenwere telling
the truth,the gruesometruthof the patriarchalfamily?Should we not trusttheir
word,ratherthan Freud's?To whichthe psychoanalysts
(especiallythe Lacanians
and Narrativists)respond that one cannot prove the truthof speech, which has
nothing to do with reality.All one can do is listen and accept it in its fictive,
narrativedimension.How then can we settlethe matter,since here again we have
nothingbut the word of the patient's"innerchild"? In this trialconcerningthe
seduction theory,are we not once again faced withone of those irritatingcases of
havingtojudge withoutproof,of decision in uncertainty?
I would like to argue thatdespite appearances, this is not the case. Psychoanalystsand proponents of real seduction oppose one another concerning the
truthvalue of Freud's patients' narratives,but theyneverquestion the narratives
themselves.But we can legitimately
ask whetherthereeverwere such narratives,if
and whetherthese narrativeswere reallyspontaneous.
I
theywere reallynarratives,
to
examine
the
these
stories
were
less
the
propose
followinghypothesis:
patients'
than the doctor's; theywere less confessionsthan suggestions.If Freud mustbe
criticized,it is not because he refusedto trusthis patients'word,but because he
extortedconfessionsfromthemthatcorrespondedto his expectationsand refused
to acknowledgethiswhen he realized it. What proofsdo I have?Though theyare
not absolute,at least theyhave the advantageof being on the record,unlikethose
speculations concerningthe fantasticor real nature of the scenes of seduction,
and they are available to anyone who takes the time to read Freud without
preconceived notions. At any rate, theyseem to be numerous and convergent
enough tojustifyreopeningthe case. I submitthemhere in the hopes of unveiling
the artificialnature of the debate. I also intend to call several witnesseswhose
has been barelytakenintoaccount tillnow:Freud'scolleagues.
testimony
2. First,a fewfacts.In the early1960s,a teamof doctorsbased in Denver and
led by the pediatrician C. Henry Kempe found that X raysof young children
showed a surprisingly
high incidence of fracturesthatwere not reportedby the
parents.Apparently,theywere beating theirkidsso badlythattheywere breaking
theirbones.2Thus began whatIan Hacking has called one of "the mostimportant
Americanconsciousness-raising
activitiesof the past thirty
years."3X raysdon't lie,
1.
Sigmund Freud, The StandardEdition of theCompletePsychologicalWorks,vol. 22, ed. James
Strachey(London: Hogarth Press,1953-74), p. 120. CitationsfromTheStandardEditionare hereafter
cited as SE, followedbythe volume number.
2.
C. Henry Kempe et al., "The Battered-Child Syndrome,"Journal of theAmericanMedical
Association
181 (July-September1962), pp. 17-24. See also RayH. Helferand Kempe, TheBattered
Child
of Chicago Press,1968).
(Chicago: The University
3.
Ian Hacking,"Memoro-Politics:
Traumaand the Soul,"lecturepresentedat PrincetonUniversity,
September25, 1992.
Neurotica:Freud and theSeductionTheory
17
and this discoveryof the "battered-childsyndrome"made a strongimpression,

perhapsless forthe parentalcrueltythanforthe nearlyseamlessfamilialdeception
theyrevealed.Who could tell?Perhaps behind the charmingMr.Jones next door
lurkeda vile domestictyrant.The era of suspicionhad begun.
At first,the term "battered-childsyndrome"referredonly to the physical
abuse of children.Veryquickly,however,this idea gave wayto the more general
and diffusenotion of "child abuse." In thisregard,Ian Hacking citessome telling
In 1967 an investigationconducted byDavid C. Gil revealed7,000 cases
statistics.4
of child abuse in the United States.In 1982, the National Centeron Child Abuse
estimated the number of abused children at 1.1 million. In 1989, the number
topped 2.4 million. It is not difficultto guess that this exponential growthhas
more to do with the investigators'redefinitionof child abuse than with a real
increase of physicalabuse of children. Though the notion of child abuse has
retained the connotation of secret familialviolence, it has come to encompass
"childsexual abuse."5It is the latterthat
"neglect,""emotionalabuse," and finally,
mobilizes
the
attention
of
and the media, to the point of
researchers
currently
the
of
in
other
forms
abuse
retroactively
absorbing
popular Americanconsciousness. Even thoughchild sexual abuse in child-carecentersand (more recently)in
confessionalsis also a hot topic,it is obviouslyintrafamilial
sexual abuse thatis on
mostpeople's minds.In short,in 1996 America,"childabuse" means "incest."
It is this"Oedipal" versionof the notion of child abuse thatis at the origin
of the presentdebate concerningthe seduction theory,and this is due, historically,to twofactors.The first,easilyobservable,is the appropriationof the notion
of child abuse by the feministmovementof the 1970s. The notion of "batteredwifesyndrome"is clearlymodeled on Kempe's "battered-child
syndrome,"and it
did not take long forthe twophenomena to be viewed,rightly,
as manifestations
of
one and the same male-patriarchalviolence. The sexual, incestuous inflection
came about later (Hacking dates it to 1975) and is clearlyinscribedin the same
logic. This does not mean, however,that it is easilyexplained. Afterall, whydid
some feministscome to focus the entirechild-abusedebate around incest,
notably
incest?6Despite thewell-documentedrealityof incest,the statistics
father-daughter
do notjustifymakingit a generalsocietalfact,let alone a universalphenomenon,7
unless the figuresare artificially
inflatedbyincludingbehaviorthatwas previously
considered innocent, like fondling,playingdoctor,or givingenemas.8 Is this a
4.
Hacking,"The Makingand Molding of Child Abuse,"CriticalInquiry17 (Winter1991), pp. 258,
271-72. Much of what followsis based on Hacking's excellent article,most of whose conclusions I
share.
5.
On the catch-all character of the notion of "child abuse," see Jeanne M. Giovannonni and
Rosina M. Becerra,Defining
ChildAbuse(New York:Free Press,1979).
6.
Incest (Cambridge: Harvard
Judith Lewis Herman, with Lisa Hirschman, Father-Daughter
Press,1981).
University
7.
Such is the radical thesis advanced by psychohistorianLloyd deMause: it is not the Oedipal
16 (1988).
fantasythatis universal,but realincest. See "WhatIncest Barrier?"JournalofPsychohistory
8.
On the subjectof enemas,see the poignantarticleby"incestsurvivor"and TimemagazinecorrespondentBarbara Dolan, "MyOwn Story,"Time,October 7, 1991. See also Marcia E. Herman-Giddens
18
OCTOBER
reason to attributethisobsessionwithreal incestto some good old Oedipal fantasy

in need of analysis?This Oedipal explanation is not onlyinsultingto critics;it is
also perfectlyunfair.Far frompsychoanalysisbeing in a position to furnishthe
truthof this"illusion,"psychoanalysis
is itselfhistorically
responsibleforit.
Indeed, a second factor seems to have played a decisive role in the
"Oedipalization" of the notion of child abuse: its appropriation by psychoanalyticallybased psychotherapeuticdiscourse. Before the mid-1970s,storiesof
abuse came mostlyfromraped or batteredwomen and, in the case of children,
fromsocial workersand doctors.Afterthat,however,the storiescame increasingly
frompatients in therapy,and as a consequence theychanged considerably,as
much in content as in reliability.The trend seems to have been startedby the
publication of Flora Rheta Schreiber's Sybilin 1973.9 "Sybil,"an art student at
was being treatedby the psychoanalyst
Cornelia Wilbur,and
Columbia University,
secondarilybyWilbur'sbackup therapist,HerbertSpiegel. Spiegel, coauthor with
Abram Kardinerof a book on traumaticwar neurosesand a recognizedspecialist
in hypnosis,noticed Sybil'snaturalhypnotictalentsand used her as a guinea pig
in "age regression"experimentsconducted at Columbia. Encouraged by these
experiments,Wilburbegan to use hypnosisforanamnesticpurposes,and quickly
unearthed in Sybilmemoriesof physicaland sexual abuse by her mother,as well
as no less than sixteen different"personalities."loThe book that the journalist
Schreiberbased on thissensationalcase quicklybecame one of the ten best-sellers
of 1973 and put the old diagnosisof "multiplepersonality"back on the psychiatric
map, tyingit solidlyto child sexual abuse conceived as the instigatingtrauma.
Schreiber received hundreds of lettersfromwomen thankingher for helping
them to understand the nature of theirillness," and it was not long before Dr.
Richard Kluftformallytheorized the latterat a 1979 meeting of the American
PsychiatricAssociation:MultiplePersonalityDisorder (or MPD) is the resultof a
hypnotic"dissociation"broughton byseverechildhood traumas,especiallysexual
ones, and it can be treatedwiththe help of hypnosis,havingthe patientrelivethe
instigatingtrauma (or traumas). One recognizeshere a rathercrude version of
Freud's seduction theory,leaning slightlytowardPierreJanet. The diagnosis of
MPD was included in the 1981 DSM-III, and has since spread likewildfire,
carrying
and Nancy L. Berson, "Enema Abuse in Childhood: Reportfroma Survey,"Treating
AbuseToday:The
International
and Therapy,
1994. The assimilationof the
Newsjournal
ofAbuseSurvivorship
July/August
administrationof enemas to an incestuous practice can be traced back to Freud's article "Female
Sexuality"(1931): "The women patientsshowinga strongattachmentto theirmotherin whom I have
been able to studythe pre-Oedipusphase have all told me thatwhen theirmothergave themenemas
or rectaldouches theyused to offerthe greatestresistanceand reactwithfearand screamsof rage. ...
I onlycame to understandthe reason forsuch a speciallyviolentopposition froma remarkmade by
Ruth Mack Brunswick... to the effectthatshe was inclinedto compare the outbreakof anger afteran
enema to the orgasmfollowinggenitalexcitation"(SE 21, pp. 237-38).
9.
Flora Rheta Schreiber,Sybil(Chicago: ContemporaryBooks, 1973).
10.
HerbertSpiegel,interviewbyauthor,tape recording,NewYork,March 1993 and May 1995.
11.
BrettKahr,directorof the BritishInstituteforPsycho-History
and organizerof the Flora Rheta
SchreiberMemorial,interviewbyauthor,London, April 1993.
19
in its wake a general redefinition of the psychotherapeutic field in terms of

"trauma" and "dissociative disorders."12
Hacking writes: "The multiple personality movement has ridden on the back
of child abuse."'3 The converse is at least as true, if not more so: the notion of
child abuse, at least in its incestuous form, has been propagated largely due to the
"dissociative" theory of MPD and to the psychotherapeutic practices it has shaped,
each patient's story seeming further to confirm the unsuspected extent of the
phenomenon. In 1973, Sybil's story spoke only of physical abuse with erotic
overtones. Thereafter, the stories became more explicit, more accusatory: patients
began to speak of sexual fondling, then of outright incest, of anal penetration at
a young age, of oral sex under the threat of sadistic abuse. Following the
there has been
publication in 1980 of yet another best-seller,MichelleRemembers,14
an avalanche of stories of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) committed by a large occult
network, "a national-international
type organization that's got a structure
somewhat similar to the Communist cell structure."15 These gruesome stories,
which are accredited by an important fraction of the therapeutic community,
speak of group rape, child sacrifice, blood rituals, necrophagia, even of hypnotic
brainwashing and programming in the tradition of The Manchurian Candidate.
(This is a striking repetition of history,for,as we will see, the idea of a "primeval
devil religion with rites that are carried on secretly"16 was also one of Freud's
major preoccupations in 1897: the father is the Devil, and vice versa.) In spite of
intensive investigation, law-enforcement authorities have to this day been unable
to corroborate even one of these ritual satanic murders.17 But this did not deter
the feminist monthly Ms., the firstjournal to run courageous articles about the
reality of incest, from publishing a first-person account of satanic ritual abuse
accompanied by this bold commentary: "If We Want to Stop Ritual Abuse, The
First Step Is to Believe These Brutal Crimes Occur."s8
Not everyone agrees; far from it. From the very start voices were raised in
On the historyof the currentmultiplepersonality"movement,"see Michael Kenny,ThePassion
12.
in American
Culture(Washington,D.C.: Smithsonian,1986); Hacking,
ofAnselBourne:MultiplePersonality
theSoul: MultiplePersonality
and theSciencesofMemory
(Princeton: PrincetonUniversityPress,
Rewriting
"Who's Who? IntroducingMultiplePersonality"(1992), in SupposingtheSubject,
1995); Borch-Jacobsen,
ed. Joan Copjec (London: Verso,1994).
13.
Hacking,"The Makingand Moldingof Child Abuse,"p. 262.
14.
LawrencePadzer and MichelleSmith,Michelle
Remembers
(NewYork:Congdon & Lattes,1980).
15.
Bennet Braun, directorof Rush Presbyterian-St.
Luke's Medical Center's DissociativeProgram
in Chicago, quoted byJeffrey
S. Victor in SatanicPanic: Creationof a Contemporary
Legend(Chicago:
Open Court, 1993), p. 96.
16.
The Complete
LettersofSigmundFreudto Wilhelm
M. Masson (Cambridge: The
Fliess,ed. Jeffrey
Press,1985), p. 227. Hereaftercited as Letters.
Belknap Pressof HarvardUniversity
17.
See KennethV. Lanning, "Satanic,Occult, RitualisticCrime: A Law EnforcementPerspective,"
ThePoliceChiefOctober 1989, pp. 62-83. See also the sobering reportcommissionedby the British
Departmentof Health,Jean La Fontaine, TheExtentand NatureofOrganisedand RitualAbuse:Research
Findings(London: HMSO, 1994).
18.
Elizabeth S. Rose, "Survivingthe Unbelievable: A First-PersonAccount of Cult RitualAbuse,"
1993.
Ms.,January-February
20
OCTOBER
protestagainst the diagnosis of "MultiplePersonalityDisorder,"emphasizingthe

of memoriesobtained under hypnosis.These voiceswerein a relative
unreliability
the "satanic" excesses of the child-abuse movementhave finally
but
minority,
caused a decisiveturnof the tide. In 1992 a "False MemorySyndromeFoundation"
was created in Philadelphia to defend the interestsof parents accused by their
children of sexual and/or satanic abuse. The medical pretension of "False
MemorySyndrome"(or FMS, as it is knownin the trade) does not seem to have
much more scientific consistency than the diagnoses it opposes, but the
Foundation's lobbying effortshave already paid off,judging by the recent
avalanche of articlesand TV reportsquestioningthe validityof memoriesof abuse
obtained in therapy.'19
Parentssued by theirchildrenon the basis of memoriesof
abuse recovered during therapy are now fightingback, suing the therapists
instead (nobody so farhas sued the patients;why?).The backlashhas begun, and
it threatensto throwout the baby of child abuse withthe bath of bad therapy.I
would be sorryto see what followsinterpretedas yetanother expressionof the
backlash,but I am afraidthatmyprotestswillbe in vain.
3. In this contextof growingdisillusion,the Freudian hypothesisof fantasy
seems to be regainingground thatwas lost over the last decade or so. As Hacking
pointsout,
It is uncanny how Freud's early adventuresare repeated.... Do you
recall how he had to reviseall his earlyconceptionsof the aetiologyof
hysteria,when he "discovered"that the babe is not innocentafterall?
We call thatthe discoveryof infantilesexuality.Is MPD destined to step
intoeven thatFreudianfootstep?20
Clearly,this is not a course that Hacking favors,but one can understand the
temptationin some quartersto seek refugein the good old Freudian doctrine:
afterall, was Freud not rightto abandon the seductiontheoryin favorof a theory
of desire, of fantasy,and of the Oedipus complex, contraryto whatJeffrey
M.
Masson asserted in his 1984 The Assault on Truth?21
19.
Cover article fromNewsweek,
April 19, 1993; Lawrence Wright,"RememberingSatan," New
Yorker,
October
May 17 and 24, 1993; Owen Flanagan,"MemoryPlayingFalse," TimesLiterary
Supplement,
"Lies of the Mind," Time,November29, 1993; Susan Chira,"Sex Abuse: The Coil
29, 1993; Leon Jaroff,
of Truthand Memory,"New YorkTimes,December 5, 1993; etc. This firstsalvo has since been followed
bymore systematicpounding: Elizabeth Loftusand KatherineKetcham,TheMythofRepresssed
Memory:
and Allegations
False Memories
ofSexualAbuse(New York:St. Martin'sPress, 1994); Richard Ofshe and
Ethan Watters,MakingMonsters:
and SexualHysteria(New York:Scribner's,
FalseMemories,
Psychotherapy,
IncestAccusations
and Shattered
Lives (Hinesburg,Vt.: Upper
1994); Mark Pendergast,Victims
ofMemory:
Access, 1995); FrederickCrews,"The Revenge of the Repressed,"New YorkReviewofBooks41, nos. 19
and 20 (November17 and December 1, 1994), reprintedin Crews,TheMemory
Wars(New York:A New
YorkReviewBook, 1995).
20.
Hacking,"AristotleMeets Incest-and Innocence,"unpublishedmanuscript.
21.
Masson, TheAssaulton Truth:Freud'sSuppression
(New York:HarperCollins,
oftheSeduction
Theory
1984, 2d ed. 1985, 3d ed. 1992). All page citationsare takenfromthe thirdedition.
21
of Sanskrit,ex-psychoanalyst,
and ex-projectsdirectorat the
An ex-professor
SigmundFreudArchives,Inc., Masson claimed in thisbook thatFreud abandoned
his seduction theory"notfortheoreticalor clinicalreasons,but because of lack of
courage."22In itself,this thesiswas hardlynew: Florence Rush,JudithHerman,
and other feministcriticsof psychoanalysishad no need of Masson in order to
see Freud's abrupt about-faceas an expressionof his masculineprejudices and a
violence done to the wordsof his femalepatients.23The new elementwas thatthe
critique came thistime froman insider.Because of his privilegedposition in the
Freud Archives,Masson possessed documentsthatwere inaccessibleto the public
and that supposedlyproved the extentof Freud's denial of the realityof sexual
abuse. The NewYorkTimesBookReviewdid not hesitateto speak of a "Watergateof
the psyche."Justas Kempe's X rayshad done for the "battered-child
syndrome,"
Masson revealed the sinister reality of psychoanalysis. Freud had been the
accomplice of the perverse papas, and there reallyhad been, as some feminist
critics had long suspected, a cover-upand a conspiracyof silence. As further
proof,Masson himselfwas immediatelysacked by KurtR. Eissler,the well-named
"Secretary"of the Freud Archives,as soon as the latter got wind of Masson's
hereticalviews.Wouldsuchviolencehavebeen necessary,
argueMasson'sdefenders,
iftherewas nothingto hide?
Whom are we to believe? Masson or the psychoanalysts?
The question is a
hot one, giventhe importanceof the stakes,but the question is not well formed.
Somethingdoes seem to have been hidden byFreud and his successors,but was it
necessarilywhatMasson claimed? Conversely,ifMasson and his feministallies are
wrong about the realityof the scenes of seduction alleged by Freud's patients,
does that mean thatFreud was rightto see them as fantasiesand thatwe should
followthe same course a hundredyearslater?Here is an alternativesolution,one
thatis as disastrousforMasson as it is forthe psychoanalysts:
whatFreud and his
followershid so carefully,
or at least denied, is the suggested
natureof thosefamous
"scenes."There was a cover-up,yes,but not the one thatpeople think.
This hypothesisis not onlyplausiblein lightof the currentdebate concerning
the iatrogenesisof "memories"of sexual abuse; it also conformsto Freud's initial
debate with his colleagues, which revolved around preciselythat question. In
this respect, it is notable that Masson's interpretationcompletelyignores the
discussionthatwas going on at the time about suggestionin general and its role
in Freud's theoryof hysteriain particular(the term"suggestion"is not even listed
in Masson's index). As a matterof fact,Masson attributesthe abandonmentof the
seduction theoryto two convergentfacts:(1) Freud's desire to minimizeFliess's
role in the bleedingof his patientEmma Eckstein,byattributingit to "wishes"and
"fantasies"ratherthan to his friend'sdisastroussurgicalintervention;and (2) to
22.
Ibid., p. 190.
1 (1977), pp. 31-45; Herman,Father-Daughter
23.
Florence Rush,"The FreudianCover-Up,"Chrysalis
Incest,pp. 9-10.
22
OCTOBER
Freud's no less pressingdesire to reconcile himselfwithhis male colleagues,who

werescandalizedbyhis allegationsof incestand pedophilia.
The firstreason invokedbyMasson,whichelaboratesthe classicexplanation
the
"transference"on Fliess,24is not at all decisive, for Freud's remarkson
by
Emma's "fantasies"could be easilyreconciledwithFreud's seduction theory.The
notion of fantasyis in facta firstattemptat rationalizing
the seduction theory,a
to
for
Freud
account
for
the
fantasist
nature
of certain "scenes,"
way
manifestly
whileallowinghim to continuebelievingin the realityof the initial"scene."At the
time he was proposinghis remarkson Emma's fantasies,Freud was convincedthat
the fantasieswere"protectivefictions,"
destinedto hide or "sublimate"the memory
of the realtrauma.25So it is hard to see whyFreud would have feltcompelled to
sacrificehis seduction theoryon the altar of his friendshipforFliess,since in his
mind the theoryalreadysufficiently
exoneratedthe latter.
As to Masson's second reason,whichinterestsus more at thispoint,it would
be plausible only if Freud's colleagues were actuallyrepulsed by the idea of real
incest and sexual perversion.But this is farfrombeing the case: on this point,
Masson is the victim(a quite willingone, to be sure) of the hardy"legend of the
hero" forgedbyFreud and his biographersin regardto thatepisode. Not onlydid
Freud not "suffer...intellectualisolation"duringthatperiod, as Masson claims,26
but he was not the firstor the onlyone interestedin sexuality,includingperverse
sexuality.As FrankSullowayhas expertlyshown,Freud had been preceded along
that path by the sexologistsof the 1880s, notablyAlbertvon Schrenck-Notzing,
Richardvon Krafft-Ebing,
Leopold L6wenfeld,and AlbertMoll.27They had no a
24.
Despite his assurances to the contrary(The Assaulton Truth,pp. 213-14, n. 4), Masson draws
heavilyon Max Schur,"Some Additional 'Day Residues' of the Specimen Dream of Psychoanalysis":
"It would ... seem that Emma was one of the firstpatients who offeredFreud a clue to the crucial
realization that what his patients had described to him as actual episodes were fantasies"
A GeneralPsychology,
ed. R. M. Loewensteinet al. [NewYork:InternationalUniversities
(Psychoanalysis:
Press,1966), p. 83]. Also, see more generally,Schur,Freud:Livingand Dying(New York:International
UniversitiesPress,1972).
Freudto Fliess,May2, 1897,in Letters,
25.
p. 239. This idea had alreadybeen expressedin a footnoteto
Freud's"FurtherRemarkson the Neuro-Psychoses
of Defence" (February1896): "I myself
am inclinedto
thinkthatthe storiesof being assaultedwhichhysterics
so frequently
inventmaybe obsessionalfictions
whicharisefromthe memory-trace
ofa childhoodtrauma"(SE 3, p. 164). Contraryto whatMassonseems
to think,the fantasyis an integralpartof the theoryof seduction,insofaras itis conceivedofbyFreud as
a formationthatis addedto the memoryof the real "scene."On thispointsee Jean Laplanche and JeanBertrandPontalis,"Fantasmeoriginaire,fantasmedes origines,originedu fantasme,"
Les Temps
Modernes
215 (April1964), pp. 1847-48;Jean G. Schimek,"Factand Fantasyin the SeductionTheory:A Historical
Association
35 (1987), p. 239; and especiallyPeterJ. Swales,
Review,"
JournaloftheAmerican
Psychoanalytic
"Freud,JohannWeier,and the Statusof Seduction;The Role of theWitchin the Conceptionof Phantasy"
(New York:privatelypublishedby the author,1982; reprintedin SigmundFreud:Critical
ed.
Assessments,
LaurenceSpurling[London: Routledge,1989]), pp. 11-14 (page citationsare to the 1982 edition).
26.
Masson, TheAssaulton Truth,p. 134. For a more sober assessmentof what Freud called his
The
"splendid isolation" during that time,see Henri F. Ellenberger,TheDiscovery
oftheUnconscious:
and EvolutionofDynamicPsychiatry
History
(New York:Basic Books, 1970), pp. 448, 455, 468.
FrankJ. Sulloway,Freud,Biologistof theMind (1979; reprint,Cambridge: Harvard University
27.
Press, 1992), chap. 8. See also Michel Foucault, Histoirede la sexualiti1: La Volontide savoir (Paris:
Gallimard,1976).
23
priorireason to be scandalized by the sexual theoryof hysteriaproposed by their

in particular,had himselfmentioned numerous
young colleague. Krafft-Ebing,
Sexualis(1886),28
cases of child sexual abuse, includingincest,in his Psychopathia
and his famousremarkabout Freud's lectureon "The Aetiologyof Hysteria"-"It
sounds like a scientificfairytale"29-could not possiblyhave the significanceof
offended indignation that Masson claims for it. In reality,the objections of
Freud'scolleagues to his new theoryof hysteriahad nothingto do withthe content
of the "scenes of seduction" alleged by Freud, but ratherwith the way that he
obtained themfromhis patients.
Indeed, we tend to forgetthat those sexologists,like Freud himself,were
theoreticiansand practitionersof hypnosis.o0
As a result,theywere verysensitive
to the role of suggestionin the treatmentof hysteria,since theyhad all observed
the collapse of Charcot'stheoryof "grande
the criticismof Bernheim
hysterie"under
and the NancySchool. In all likelihood,thisis what Krafft-Ebing
meant when he
spoke of a "scientificfairytale": he knew the tendencyof hystericsto make up
storiesin the sexual domain, but most especially,like everybodyat the time,he
tied that pseudologiaphantasticato hysterical"suggestibility."
In other words,the
seductiontheorywas a "fairytale,"a hysterical
lie, but above all, itwas a "scientific"
fairytale,a fairytale suggested
byDr. Freud.The GermanneurologistRobertGaupp
said it quite clearlyin his reviewof Freud's essayon "Screen Memories" (1899):
28.
See Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
dercontriiren
sexualis,mitbesonderer
Psychopathia
Beriicksichtigung
Eine klinisch-forensische
Studie,9th ed. (the one available to Freud in 1896-97)
Sexualempfindung:
(Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1894), chap. 6, par. 1, "Offense against Morality in the Form of
Exhibition,"Cases 108 and 199; par. 2, "Rape and Murder,"pp. 361-62: "Today,rape on childrenis
remarkablyfrequent.Hofmann (Ger Med.,i, p. 155) and Tardieu [Attentats]
reporthorriblecases. The
latterestablishesthe factthat,from1851 to 1875 inclusive,22,017 cases of rape came beforethe courts
in France, and of these, 17,657 were committedon children";par. 6, "Violationof Individualsunder
the Age of Fourteen,"p. 375: "The manner in which acts of immoralityare committedon children
differswidely.. ... They consist chieflyin libidinous manipulations of the female genitals, active
manustrupation(using the child's hand foronanism), flagellation,etc. Less frequentis cunnilingus,
in boysor girls,pederastyof girls,coitusbetween the thighs,exhibition";par. 9, "Incest,"pp.
irrumare
"Ueber UnzuchtmitKindernund Pidophilia erotica,"in Friedreich's
412-14; etc. See also Krafft-Ebing's
Blatter
Medicin(1895), reissued and expanded in 1898 in Krafft-Ebing,
Arbeiten
aus dem
f gerichtl.
derPsychiatrie
undNeuropathologie
Gesamtgebiet
(Leipzig: Barth,1897-99), Heft4, pp. 91-127.
29.
Freud to Fliess,April26, 1896,in Letters,
p. 184.
30.
Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, Die Suggestions-Therapie
bei KrankhaftenErscheinungendes
Mit besonderer
dercontrdiren
Geschlechtssinnes.
Beriicksichtigung
Sexualempfindung
(Stuttgart:Ferdinand
Enke, 1892); AlbertMoll, DerHypnotismus
(Berlin:Fischer'sMedicinischeBuchhandlung,H. Kornfeld,
HandbuchderLehrevon Hypnoseund derSuggestion,
mit
1889); Leopold L6wenfeld,Der Hypnotismus:
besonderer
ihreBedeutungfiir
Medicinund Rechtspflege
(Wiesbaden:J. F Bergmann,1901);
Beriicksichtigung
Eine Experimentelle
Studieauf demGebietedes Hypnotismus
Krafft-Ebing,
(Stuttgart:Enke, 1888); "Zur
Verwerthungder Suggestionstherapie (Hypnose) bei Psychosen und Neurosen," WienerKlinische
4 (October 22, 1891); and "Zur Suggestivbehandlungder HysteriaGravis,"Zeitschriftfiir
Wochenschrift
4 (1896). Krafft-Ebing
founded a private clinic in 1886 where "psychicaltreatment"Hypnotismus
i.e., Bernheim's method of suggestion-was used intensively;see Edward Shorter,FromParalysisto
Illnessin theModernEra (New York:Free Press,1992), p. 154. Among
Fatigue:A History
ofPsychosomatic
others who divided their interestsbetween hypnotismand the "sexual theory"were AugusteForel,
Paul M6bius,and Max Dessoir.
24
OCTOBER
"Anyonewho can givehis questionsa suggestivetwist,whetherdone consciouslyor

can obtain fromsusceptiblepatientsany answerwhichfitsinto his
unconsciously,
system.That may be the reason whyFreud's psychoanalysesabound in material
whichotherresearchersseek in vain."31AlbertMoll-a man whomFreud called "a
petty,malicious, narrow-mindedindividual"32and "a brute"s3-put it no less
bluntlyin 1909 in regard to Freud's case histories,and there is everyreason to
believethathiswordsreflectan opinion he had alreadyformedin 1896:
These clinicalhistories... ratherproduce the impressionthatmuch of
the alleged historieshave been introducedbythe suggestivequestioning
of the examiner,or that sufficientcare has not been taken to guard
againstillusionsof memory.The impressionproducedin mymindis that
the theoryof Freud ... sufficesto account forthe clinicalhistories,not
thatthe clinicalhistoriessufficeto provethe truthofthe theory.34
The most striking document, however, comes from the person whom
What was L6wenfeld'scrime?In
Freud, in 1900, called "the stupidL6wenfeld."35
1899 L6wenfeld, who had already criticized the Freudian notion of "anxiety
neurosis,"36and who would somewhatlaterquestion the therapeuticvalue of the
"Breuer-Freudmethod,"37published a commentaryon the seduction theory,in
which he had this to say-among other things:"By chance, one of the patients
on whom Freud used the analytic method came under my observation. The
patient told me withcertaintythat the infantilesexual scene which analysishad
apparentlyuncoveredwas pure fantasyand had neverreallyhappened to him."38
It is easy to see whyFreud was furious:L6wenfeldhad said out loud whathe himself had been quietlythinkingfor the last two years,though carefullyrefraining
fromannouncingit publicly.
Masson quotes thisdocumentin his edition of the Letters
toFliess,39
as well as
in the prefaceto the thirdeditionof his Assaulton Truth,
wherehe adds the following commentary:"This account no doubt distressedFreud. Here was a well-known
31.
RobertGaupp, Zeitschriftfiir
undPhysiologie
derSinnesorgane
23 (1900), p. 234; reprinted
Psychologie
in Norman Kiell, FreudwithoutHindsight:ReviewsofHis Work(1893-1939) (Madison: International
UniversitiesPress,1988), p. 38.
Herman Nunbergand ErnstFedern,MinutesoftheViennaPsychoanalytic
32.
vol. 2 (New York:
Society,
InternationalUniversitiesPress,1962-75), p. 49.
33.
Freud toJung,May 16, 1909, in TheFreud/Jung
Letters:
The Correspondence
between
SigmundFreud
and C. G.Jung,ed. WilliamMcGuire (London: Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 223.
34.
Moll, TheSexualLifeoftheChild(1909), trans.Eden Paul (New York:Macmillan,1912), p. 190.
35.
Freud to Fliess,May7, 1900,in Letters,
p. 412.
36.
neurasthenischer
und hysterischer
L6wenfeld,"Uber die Verknfipfung
Symptomein Anfallsform
nebst Bemerkungenfiberdie FreudscheAngstneurose,"
Miinchener
medicinische
42 (1895).
Wochenschrift
See also Freud to Fliess,October8, 1895,in Letters,
p. 141.
37.
L6wenfeld,DerHypnotismus,
p. 358.
38.
Die Nerv6seSt6rungen
sexuellenUrsprungs
L6wenfeld,Sexuallebenund Nervenleiden:
(Wiesbaden:
J. F. Bergmann,1899 [2d ed.]), p. 195.
39.
Letters,
p. 413, n. 3.
25
Germanpsychiatrist
sayingthatFreud's patientswere merelyengaged in fantasies,
that theywere not remembering,and forproof he had a retractionfromone of
these verypatients whom Freud had relied on to devise his original theory."40
ClearlyMasson would like us to conclude thatL6wenfeld,on the basis of a single
"retraction,"pushed Freud to see his patients' stories as mere "fantasies."He
neglects, however,to quote the beginning of the passage, in which L6wenfeld
spelled out what he meant by "fantasy."Afterquoting a passage from "The
whereFreud explained thateven under steadypressure,his
Aetiologyof Hysteria,"
patients generally refused to consider the "scenes" as genuine memories,
L6wenfeldcontinued (I quote here the English translationof Han Israels and
MortonSchatzman,who correctlyrestorethe passage in a recentarticle):
These remarks[by Freud] show two things:1. The patientswere subjected to a suggestiveinfluencecoming fromthe person who analyzed
them, by which the rise of the mentioned scenes was broughtquite
close to their imagination. 2. These fantasypicturesthat had arisen
under the influenceof the analysisweredefinitively
denied recognition
as memoriesof real events.I also have a directexperience to support
thissecond conclusion.41
Obviously,L6wenfeld's"fantasy"is neitherthe mere hystericalconfabulationthat
Masson intends, nor Freud's later "wish-fantasy":
it is the hypnagogicimagery
solicitedin the patientby the "suggestive"pressureof the psychoanalyst.
In fact,
had
a
L6wenfeld
of
for
"stupid"
hypnotic,interpersonaltheory fantasy, which
Freud's theoryof hysterialooked like a pure suggestiveillusion. (Those interested
in conspiracytheories will be happy to learn that the passage fromLowenfeld,
even in the truncatedversiongivenbyMasson,has inexplicablydisappeared from
the Germanedition of the completelettersto Fliess.)42
4. Unlike Masson, Freud knewthese objectionsquite well,fortheywere the
ones raisedbyBleuler,Striimpell,MichellClarke,and othersupon the publication
of StudiesonHysteria.43
Indeed, he knewthemso wellthathe continuallyanticipates
themin hiswritingsfromthisperiod,startingwiththe Studies:
40.
Masson, TheAssaulton Truth,
p. xxii.
41.
Han Israels and Morton Schatzman, "The Seduction Theory,"HistoryofPsychiatry
4 (1993),
p. 43-44.
42.
Ibid., p. 44, n. 5.
43.
See Eugen Bleuler: "we cannot be at all sure thatthe 'stateof concentration'is not quite simply
a particularformof hypnosis.It is also quite possible that the therapeuticsuccesses of the 'cathartic
method' are based quite simplyon suggestionrather than on abreaction of the suppressed affect"
medizinische
43 [1896], p. 525; reprintedin Kiell,Freudwithout
(Miinchener
Wochenschrift
p. 74);
Hindsight,
Adolf von Strfimpel:"I wonder about the qualityof materialsmined froma patient under hypnotic
influence.I am afraidthatmanyhysterical
womenwillbe encouragedto givefreereinto theirfantasies
and inventiveness.The attendingphysiciancan easilybe put into a veryslipperyposition" (Deutsche
8 [1896], p. 161; reprintedin Freudwithout
Zeitschrift
Hindsight,
p. 68); J. Michell
fiirNervenheilkiinde
Clarke: "The necessityof bearing in mind, in studyinghystericalpatients,the great readiness with
26
OCTOBER
We are not in a position to force anythingon the patient about the

thingsof which he is ostensiblyignorantor to influencethe products
of the analysisbyarousingan expectation.I have neveronce succeeded,
the reproductionsof
by foretellingsomething,in alteringor falsifying
memoriesor the connectionof events.44
Of course,we mightwellwonderhowFreudcould be so certain.Breuer,in a public
statementof 1895,advanced the followingline of defense:
If Freud's theories at firstgive the impression of being ingenious
psychologicaltheorems,linkedto thefacts,but essentiallyaprioristically
constructed,then the speaker can insistthat it is actuallya matterof
facts and interpretations that have grown out of observations. As
against the suspicion that the recollections of patients might be
artificialproducts suggestedby the physician,Breuer can assertfrom
his own observationsthat it is enormouslyand especiallydifficultto
forcesomethingupon, or put somethingoveron, thissortof patient.45
Freud particularlyliked thisargument,whichone mightcall "the argument
for he takes it up in 1896 in "Heredityand the Aetiologyof the
resistance,"
by
and again in "The Aetiologyof Hysteria":
Neuroses,"46
The behaviourof the patientswhiletheyare reproducingtheseinfantile
experiences is in everyrespectincompatiblewiththe assumptionthat
the scenes [of seduction] are anythingelse than a realitythatis being
feltwithdistressand reproduced withthe greatestreluctance.Before
theycome for analysisthe patientsknow nothingabout these scenes.
Only the strongestcompulsion [Zwang] of the treatmentcan induce
them to embarkon a reproductionof them.... It is less easy to refute
the idea that the doctor forces reminiscences of this sort on the
patient, that he influences him by suggestion to imagine and to
reproduce them. Nevertheless,it appears to me equally untenable. I
have neveryetsucceeded in forcingon a patienta scene I was expecting
whichtheyrespond to suggestionsmaybe reiterated,as the weak point in the methodof investigation

mayperhapsbe found here. The danger being thatin such confessionsthe patientswould be liable to
make statementsin accordance whiththe slightestsuggestiongivento them,it mightbe quite unconsciously given to them, by the investigator"(Brain 19 [1896], p. 414; reprinted in Freudwithout
p. 82). Also, somewhatlater,Oskar Vogt attributedthe therapeuticresultsalleged byJosef
Hindsight,
Breuer and Freud to autosuggestion.See "Zur Methodikder ftiologischenErforschungder Hysterie,"
8 (1899), p. 74.
Hypnotismus
Zeitschriftfiir
44.
Breuerand Freud,Studieson Hysteria,
SE 2, p. 295.
45.
Original account of the discussionof November4, 1895, that followedthe three lectures"On
October 14,21, and 28, 1895,in Wiener
Hysteria,"
givenbyFreudbeforetheViennaCollege of Physicians,
medizinische
Presse36 (1895), pp. 1717-18 (quoted in Sulloway,Freud,Biologist
oftheMind,p. 508).
46.
SE 3, p. 153.
Neurotica:Freudand theSeductionTheory
27
to find,in a way that he seemed to be livingthroughit with all the

appropriatefeelings.Perhapsothersmaybe more successfulin this.47
If Freud did not manage to obtain perfect"scenes,"it was not for lack of
trying.And whathe saysin 1898 concerninghis methodforobtainingadmissions
of masturbationfromhis neurasthenicsapplies equally to the wayhe proceeded
withhis hystericalpatients:
Havingdiagnoseda case of neurasthenicneurosis... we maythenboldly
demand confirmationof our suspicionsfromthe patient. Wemustnot
be led astraybyinitial denials. If we keep firmlyto what we have inferred,
we shall in the end conquer every resistance by emphasizing the

unshakeablenatureof our convictions.48
This martialtherapeuticvoluntarism,whichnow appears again in the writingsof

in no waypreventedFreud fromconcluding
currentspecialistsin "traumawork,"49
two sentencesfurtheralong: "Moreover,the idea that one might,by one's insisnormalto accuse himselffalselyof sexual
tence,cause a patientwho is psychically
misdemeanors-such an idea maysafelybe disregardedas an imaginarydanger."50
We can restassured.
This is no small matter.For, as Freud himselflater rhetoricallyobjected in
ifthe suggestionfactorintervenesin analysis,"there
referenceto the transference,
is a risk that the influencingof our patients may make the objective certainty
(die Objectivitit)of our findings doubtful."51Freud always maintained that
suggestion,despite appearances, did not enter into analyticalconstructionsand
and he repeats it again in 1925 concerninghis seduction theory:
interpretations,
"I do not believe even now that I forced the seduction-fantasies
on mypatients,
that I 'suggested' them."52This denial of the role of suggestionis constant in
Freud, and it goes back to one of his most precocious and decisive theoretical
choices. Indeed, behind all of it lies the quarrel between the Nancy and
SalpetriereSchools concerningthe suggestedor nonsuggestednatureof Charcot's
in which Freud took the position of the latter.Even though he
"grandehysterie,"
used and advocated Bernheim'ssuggestivemethod quite early-firstin a direct
formand later,under the name of the "Breuermethod,"to act on the traumatic
memoryas Janet and Delboeuf had done before him-Freud never sided with
BernheimagainstCharcoton the problemof the "objectivity"
of the hypnoticand
47.
Ibid., p. 204-5.
48.
Emphasismine. "Sexualityin theAetiologyof the Neuroses,"in ibid.,p. 269.
49.
Compare withwhatJudithHerman,one of the mostforcefuladvocatesof the current"recovered
memorymovement,"saysabout the preliminaryworkwith "incestsurvivors":"The patient may not
have fullrecall of the traumatichistoryand mayinitiallydenysuch a history,even withcareful,direct
[NewYork:Basic Books, 1992], p. 157).
questioning"(Herman, Traumaand Recovery
50.
Ibid.
51.
Lectures
onPsycho-Analysis
(1916-1917), SE 16, p. 452.
Introductory
SE 20, p. 35.
52.
28
OCTOBER
hystericalmanifestationsobserved at the Salp&triere.Charcot,the cool neurologist, claimed to describe fixed, nonsimulated hysterical"stigmata,"by using a
hypnosisthatwas itselfconceivedas a specificand objectifiable"state,"and Freud
followedhim on these two points. As he wrotein 1888-89 in his preface to the
translationhe had done of Bernheim'sfirstbook:
We mayaccept the statementthatin essentials[the symptomatology
of
hysteria]is of a real, objectivenatureand is not falsifiedbysuggestion
on the part of the observer.This does not implyany denial that the
mechanismof hystericalmanifestations
is a psychicalone; but it is not
the mechanismof suggestionon the partof the physician.53
What Freud is alluding to here is Charcot's theoryof "traumatichysteria,"
which made traumatic hysteria a phenomenon of self-hypnosisand autoAs we know,it is preciselythispart of Charcot's theorythatBreuer
suggestion.54
and Freud took it upon themselvesto develop, followingJanet,afterthe restof
the Salpetriereedificehad collapsed under the heavypoundingof Bernheimand
the Nancy School. In this regard, the theoryof the "psychicalmechanism of
Charcotian,in thatit continues
hysteria"proposed in the Studiesremainstypically
to insistthathysterical"dissociationof consciousness"is a spontaneous,and thus
"objective,"phenomenon, uninfluencedby the observer.As forthe hypnosisthat
serves to reproduce that self-hypnosis
for the purpose of reliving"in
artificially
statunacendi"the pathogenictrauma,Freud continues,here too, to thinkof it as a
specific"state,"and not as one degree of suggestibility
among others,as the Nancy
School would have it. Hypnosis,he declares in a lecturefrom1892, is not "onlyan
artificialproductof medical technique,as Delboeuf claims... He [Freud] tendsto
think that we must hold firmlyto the authenticityof hypnosis; he takes his
argumentsfromobservationof the hypnoticstate in hystericsand thus,on this
importantpoint,agreeswiththeviewsof the CharcotSchool."55
This point is, indeed, extremelyimportant,for it is this Charcotian-and,
let me add, extremelynaive-presupposition thatallowed Freud to remainblind
for so long to his own interventionin the phenomena that he observed in his
53.
SE 1, p. 79.
54.
On thisquestion,see Borch-Jacobsen,
Philippe Koeppel, and FerdinandScherrer,"Traductions
et destinsde traductions,"L'Ecritdu temps
7 (1984), pp. 49-51; GeorgeJ. Makari,"A Historyof Freud's
FirstConcept of Transference,"
International
ReviewofPsycho-Analysis
19 (1992), pp. 415-32.
55.
Originalaccountof the lecture"On Hypnosisand Suggestion"givenbyFreud beforethe Medical
Club ofVienna,April27 and May4, 1892,in Freud,Gesammelte
am Main:
Werke,
(Frankfurt
Nachtragsband
S. FischerVerlag,1987), p. 175. Freud returnsto thispoint in GroupPsychology
and theAnalysisoftheEgo
attachmentto Charcot'stheories:"Itseemsto me worthemphasizingthe
(1921), a signofhis long-lasting
factthatthe discussionin thissection [chap. 10 of GroupPsychology]
has induced us to giveup Bernheim's
conception of hypnosisand go back to the na'fearlierone [clearlyan allusion to Charcot]. According
to Bernheimall hypnoticphenomena are to be traced to the factorof suggestion,whichis not itself
capable of furtherexplanation.We have come to the conclusionthatsuggestionis a partialmanifestation of the state[emphasismine] of hypnosis,and thathypnosisis solidlyfoundedupon a predisposition
whichhas survivedin the unconsciousfromthe earlyhistoryof the human family"(SE 18, p. 128).
29
patients. As long as hypnosis was identified with the hysterical"state," itself

understood as a modalityof self-hypnosis,
there was no reason to worryabout
the suggestiveinfluencethatBernheimwarnedagainst,since the hypnotictreatment was supposed to do nothing more than bring an internal,autonomous
psychicaldeterminismto the surface.Such was Freud'sconfidencein thatpsychical
determinismthat he thoughtit capable of "resisting"everyexternal influence,
even the therapist'smost persistentpressure.As he continued to say in 1910, at
a meeting of the Vienna PsychoanalyticalSociety,"ifone wantsto come up with
anything,one cannot avoid askingsome leading questions. Besides, the patient
can be influenced only in a direction that suggestsitselfto him.'"56Freud is often
of hypnoticsuggestion
credited with liberatinghis patients fromthe "tyranny"
and givingthemback theirstatusas speakingsubjects.In reality,Freud's refusalto
recognize the role of suggestion corresponds theoreticallyto a veryprofound
of the therapeuticrelationship,as if his patients' speech was merely
objectification
the reproductionof a "psychicalmechanism"observablefromthe exterior.Even
the fact, repeated over and over by Bernheim, Forel, and Delboeuf, that the
in
hypnotizedsubject remains awareof the hypnotist'ssuggestionsand responds,
sense
of
the
to
them
does
not
seem
to
have
on
his
made
Freud
reflect
word,
every
own role in the relation57-witnessthisstupefying
letterof May28, 1888, to Fliess:
"I have at thismomenta ladyin hypnosislyingin frontof me and thereforecan go
on writingin peace." Two paragraphslater: "The time for the hypnosisis up. I
greetyou cordially.In all haste,yourDr. Freud."58Withthissortof methodological
presupposition,it is a wonder that the disasterof the seduction theorydid not
blow up long before it did! At any rate,forfellowtravelersof the NancySchool
like Krafft-Ebing,
Moll, and L6wenfeld,it must have been patentlyobvious that
Freud was simplyrepeatingthe errorsof his "Master,"Charcot.
5. Objection: "Butyou are forgetting
thatat the timehe was elaboratinghis
seduction theoryFreud had alreadygivenup using hypnosis.How, then,can you
claim thathe was suggestingthe scenes reportedbyhis patients?"
True, the dates seem to contradictmy thesis.Beginningin the autumn of
1892, Freud progressivelygave up hypnosisin favorof "concentration"in the
a methodconsistingin
wakingstateand the "pressuretechnique" (Druckprozedur),
with
the
on
hand
the
forehead
and
pressing
patient's
askinghim or her to evoke
some idea or image. This abandonmentof hypnosiscorresponds,theoretically,
to
the accentuation of the role of repressionin hysteria,to the detrimentof the
56.
vol. 2, p. 453.
Emphasismine. Nunbergand Federn,Minutes,
57.
See what Freud himselfwrote in "Psychical (or Mental) Treatment"(1890), a "defense and
illustration"of Bernheim's"suggestivepsychotherapy":
"But hypnosisis in no sense a sleep like our
nocturnalsleep or like the sleep produced by drugs.... While the subject behaves to the restof the
externalworld as though he were asleep, thatis, as though all his senses were divertedfromit, he is
awakein his relation to the person who hypnotizedhim; he hears and sees him alone, and him he
understandsand answers"(SE 7, p. 295).
58.
Letters,
pp. 21-22.
30
OCTOBER
"hypnoid"mechanism of dissociation of consciousness. The final rupturewith

hypnosisseems to have been made in the early part of 1895, preciselyat the
momentFreud began to formulatehis theoryof the "aetiologyof hysteria."59
But
simplybecause he was no longer practicingdirecthypnosisand suggestion,does
thismean thatFreud did not "suggest"in the largersense of the word?
We mustget rid of twofalseideas here:
(a) Contraryto whatFreud seems to implymostoftenbythe term,hypnosis
cannotbe reduced to somnambulismfollowedbyamnesia.There are, as Bernheim
alreadyasserted,manydegrees of hypnosis,and it is impossibleto quantifythem
to saywherehypnosisbeginsand whereit ends,
rigorously.It is thereforedifficult
as Freud himselfrecognizesat severalpoints in his Studieson Hysteria:"I told the
patientsto lie down and deliberatelyclose theireyesin orderto 'concentrate'-all
of which had at least some resemblance to hypnosis."60He also compares his
"pressure-technique"to a "momentarilyintensifiedhypnosis"and to the wellknownhypnotictechniqueof crystalgazing.61In TheInterpretation
ofDreams,Freud
even goes so faras to saythathis methodof freeassociationproduces "a psychical
state which ... bears some analogy to the state of fallingasleep-and no doubt
also to hypnosis."62
Much later,the Wolf-Manwould stillrecall how Freudjokingly
transferenceto hypnosis:"When I do whattransference
compared psychoanalytic
showsme, it is reallylike being hypnotizedbysomeone. That's the influence.I can
rememberFreud saying,'Hypnosis,what do you mean, hypnosis,everythingwe
do is hypnosistoo.' Then whydid he discontinuehypnosis?"63
Excellentquestion:
where are we to place the famous Freudian "epistemic rupture" in such a
continuum?If it is true,as Freud said in 1917, that"psychoanalysis
proper began
when I dispensed with the help of hypnosis,"we mightwell wonder if such a
pure psychoanalysisevercame into existence!64
59.
At least officially:
we knownow thatas late as 1919, Freud continued to recommendthe use of
hypnosisin some cases. See in this regard the lettersto Federn mentioned in GerhardFichtnerand
AlbrechtHirschmiiller,
"Freudet l'hypnose:un compte-renduencore inconnu de l'ecritd'Obersteiner
d'Histoirede la Psychanalyse
(1887)," RevueInternationale
L'Hypnotisme
1(1988), p. 412; and in Leon
d'un hiritique
Chertok,Isabelle Stengers,and Didier Gille,Mimoires
(Paris: La Decouverte,1990), p. 265.
In 1951, the Hungarian stage hypnotistFranz J. Polgar published an autobiographyin which he
claimed to have been introducedto Freud byFerencziand to have acted as his "medicalhypnotist"
for
a period of six monthsin 1924 (Polgar, TheStoryofa Hypnotist
[New York:HermitageHouse, 1951]);
see alsoJeromeM. Schneck,"Freud's'Medical Hypnotist',"TheAmerican
vol.
JournalofClinicalHypnosis,
19, no. 2 (1976), pp. 80-81; MelvinA. Gravitzand Manuel I. Gerton,"Freud and Hypnosis:Reportof
Sciences
17 (1981), pp. 68-74.
Post-RejectionUse,"JournaloftheHistory
oftheBehavioral
60.
SE 2, p. 268. In "DraftH," whichdates fromJanuary1895, Freud even speaks of "concentration
hypnosis"(Letters,
p. 109).
61.
SE 2, p. 271.
62.
SE 4, p. 102.
63.
Karin Obholzer, TheWolf-Man
SixtyYearsLater(London: Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 38.
64.
Lectures
on Psycho-Analysis,
SE 16, p. 292. On thisquestion of psychoanalysis'
Introductory
alleged
"break"withhypnosis,see Borch-Jacobsen,TheFreudianSubject(Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress,
1988 [1982]), chap. 3; and "Hypnosisin Psychoanalysis"(1985), in TheEmotionalTie: Psychoanalysis,
Mimesisand Affect
(Stanford:StanfordUniversity
Press,1992).
31
has nothingto do withthe

(b) Second falseidea: the degree of suggestibility
it oftenhappens thatsuggestibility
depth of the hypnotictrance.On the contrary,
is more pronouncedin the so-calledwakingstatethan in a stateof deep hypnosis:
can be verycomplete outside of artificialsomnambulism;it can be
"Suggestibility
totallylackingin a completelysomnambulisticstate."65This point had been forcefullymade by Bernheim,who concluded quite logicallyin 1891 that "suggestive
would be just as effective,if not more effective,without
hypnosis
psychotherapy"
Freud, who translatedBernheim'ssecond book in 1892,67was obviously
proper.66
awareof this,and we mightwellconsiderthatbyturning(like others),in thatvery
year, toward a less directly hypnotic technique, Freud was only following
Bernheim'sexample.68Be thatas it may,it is clear enough thatthe absence of deep
on the part of the
hypnosiscannot be equated withthe absence of suggestibility
patient (and thus of suggestionon the part of the therapist).As Freud himself
admittedquite bluntlyto Fliessin 1901: "Myclientsare sickpeople, hence especially
irrational and suggestible."69
In short,just because at some point Freud stopped inducingsomnambulic

trancesand usingdirectsuggestion,it does not mean thatthe new "psychoanalytic"
treatmentwas ipso factononhypnoticand nonsuggestive.In thisregard,it is clear
that the Druckprozedur,
which Freud inherited fromBernheim70(and perhaps
more directlyfromBerger and Heidenhain),71was a technique of the hypnotic
65.
PierreJanet,LAutomatisme
(1989; reprint,Paris:Societe PierreJanet/CentreNational
psychologique
de la RechercheScientifique,1989), pp. 174-75.
66.
Etudesnouvelles(Paris: Octave Doin,
HyppoliteBernheim,Hypnotisme,
suggestion,
psychothirapie:
1891). A similarpoint has been made more recentlybyMiltonH. Erickson,forwhomtherecan wellbe
"hypnosis"withouthypnoticritual. See, for instance, Erickson,AdvancedTechniques
ofHypnosisand
ed. JayHaley (New York:Grunne and Stratton,1967), pp. 8, 18, 31, etc.; Haley, Uncommon
Therapy,
ThePsychiatric
(New York:Norton,1973), pp. 20, 193.
Therapy:
ofMiltonH. Erickson
Techniques
67.
und Psychotherapie
Bernheim,NeueStudieniiberHypnotismus,
Suggestion
(Leipzig-Wien:Deuticke,
1892).
68.
See, forinstance,Moriz Benedikt,"Uber Neuralgienund neuralgischeAffectionenund deren
6 (1892), pp. 67-106; Adolfvon Striimpell,UberdieEntstehung
und die
Behandlung,"KlinischeZeitschrift
durchVorstellung:
Rede beimAntritt
des Prorectorats
der. .. Universitdit
Heilungvon Krankheiten
Erlangen
(Erlangen,November4, 1892).
69.
Emphasismine. Freud to Fliess,August7, 1901, in Letters,
p. 446. The contextof thisadmission
is not insignificant,
since it is to be found in a letterin which Freud tries to defend himselfagainst
Fliess'saccusationof"read[ing] his own thoughtsintootherpeople" (ibid.,p. 447).
70.
SE 2, pp. 109-10.
71.
See Rudolf Heidenhain: "At a sittingof the medical section on the 13th of February,1880,
ProfessorBergermade a communicationto the effectthata lady he had formonthsbeen treatingfor
catalepticsymptoms,
duringone of her fitsobeyed the order to performcertainactions,as soon as he
lightlylaid his hand on the crownof her head, and he also statedthatthe same observationhad been
made on an artificially
orAnimalMagnetism:
Observations,
hypnotizedindividual"(Hypnotism
Physiological
trans.L. C. Wooldridge [1880; reprint,London: Kegan Paul, Trench& Co., 1888], p. 62). As a footnote
to the next page makes clear,this"new"hypnotictechniquebelonged in factto the old paraphernalia
of magnetic"passes":"When the above-describedresearcheswere discussed,we weretold fromall sides
that [the Danish stage-hypnotist
Carl] Hansen, when he wished to make his media performcertain
actions,keptone hand on theirheads or movedit fromside to side."Freudquotes Heidenhainalongside
Charcotin his 1889 prefaceto Bernheim'sSuggestion
(SE 1, p. 76).
32
OCTOBER
type.Under Freud's insistent"pressure,"his patientsseem to have gone through

an alteredstateof consciousness,characterizedbyvisual"scenes"of a hallucinatory
and an increase in ideo-motorand ideonature,a great emotional expressivity,
sensorial activity.As Freud saysin "The Aetiologyof Hysteria,""While theyare
recallingthese infantileexperiencesto consciousness,[the patients] sufferunder
the mostviolentsensations."72
It is no accident,then,thatduringthiswhole period, Freud speaks of "reproductions"of the infantilesexual scene, and not of "memories"or "reminiscences."
In accordance with the "trance logic" of hypnosis,these scenes were actually
experienced, actedin the present,ratherthan being trulyrecalled as memories
not Erinnerungen,
to use Freud's later terminology).As
(theywere Wiederholungen,
Jean Schimek has judiciously noted, "The reproductionof the seduction scenes
mayhave oftenbeen a kind of minorhystericalattack,withboth verbaland nonverbal expression,"7swhich immediatelybrings them close to the "relivings"in
statu nascendipreviously obtained through the cathartic method. Read, for
instance,the letterofJanuary24, 1897, to Fliess: "I was able to trace back, with
certainty,a hysteria... to a seduction, which occurred for the firsttime at 11
months and [I could] hear again the words that were exchanged between two
adults at that time! It is as though it comes froma phonograph."74Clearlythe
whole "scene" was being played (mimed) here for the benefitof the fascinated
therapist(you could call it the "scene of his Master'svoice"). Or read the letterof
December 22, 1897, apropos of a patientwho identifiedwithher mother,anally
penetrated by the fatherduring a scene allegedlyobserved by the child at age
three:"The mothernow standsin the room and shouts:'Rottencriminal,whatdo
you wantfromme? I willhave no partof that.Justwhomdo you thinkyou have in
frontofyou?' Then she staresat a certainpointin the room,her face contortedby
rage, covers her genitals with one hand and pushes something away with the
other,"etc.75
This preponderance of the mimetico-dramatic"now" over the diegeticalnarrativepast is a typicallyhypnotictraitand it conformswith the argument
Freud advanced in "The Aetiologyof Hysteria"in order to convince us of the
nonsimulatednatureof the scenes of seduction:
Even aftertheyhave gone through [the infantileexperiences] once
more in such a convincing manner, [the patients] still attempt to
withholdbelief fromthem,by emphasizingthe factthat,unlike what
SE 3, p. 204.
72.
73.
Schimek,"Factand Fantasy,"
p. 944. It is worthnotingthatSchimek,afterhavingthusemphasized
the hypnoticnature of Freud's "pressuretechnique,"promptlyshies awayfromdrawingthe obvious
conclusion of his analysis:"But myemphasisis not primarilyon the role of suggestionin the contents
of the patients'material"(p. 944). Whynot?
74.
Letters,
p. 226.
75.
Ibid., p. 288.
33
happens in the case of other forgotten material, they have no feeling

the scenes.76
of remembering
Freud interpretsthis as a resistance to remembering (and thus, in his usual style,as
"proof" of the scene), but it is actually a pure and simple absenceof any memories.
There was no memory, no story,as Freud would have it (and as Masson faithfully
repeats). What there was is something completely different:little mimetic "dramas"
or "acts," played out by the patients in a more or less light hypnotic state, during
which their suggestibilitywas most likelyverystronglyincreased.
In order to prevent a possible misunderstanding, I hasten to add that this
hypnotic suggestibilityis not the product of some mysterious power of the hypnotist,as Freud insisted too often in speaking of the "tyranny"of suggestion.77 Good
hypnotists have always known that initially suggestibilityis nothing but the sheer
acceptance of the hypnotic contract: the subject must accept the hypnotic game,
failing which the game cannot begin. In this sense, suggestibilityis always autosuggestion or, more precisely, a consensual suggestion, negotiatedwith the hypnotist.
In fact, it starts the very instant the patient decides to visit the "medicine man,"
turning himself over to this man (or his theory), in order to make his ills disappear.
This mechanism, which comes into play in all therapeutic relationships, is all the
more pronounced in any therapy that uses techniques of the hypnotic type, and it
is hard to see why early psychoanalysis would have mysteriouslyescaped it. The
psychiatrist Aschaffenburg-whom Freud called a "scoundrel"78-said it well in
1906: "Most of the patients who go to see Freud already know what he is getting at,
and this thought immediatelyevokes the complex of ideas pertaining to sexuality."79
In this sense, suggestibility is not pure passivity or pure automatism (any more
than hypnosis, of which suggestibilityis one of the fundamental characteristics).
On the contrary,it goes quite well with the inventiveness of the patients who play
the hypnotic game with their therapists, sometimes even imposing new rules for
it, as Bertha Pappenheim did with Breuer or Fanny Moser and Anna von Lieben
with Freud. Hypnosis is always a matter of interaction-a 'joint endeavor," says
Milton Erickson.80 Thus, the history of psychoanalysis, insofar as it begins (and
ends) with hypnosis, cannot be written solely from the point of view of Freud's
theories, as if Freud simply "discovered" phenomena in his patients that had formerly been undetected. In reality, his patients did their best to confirm his
theories, beyond his wildest expectations. Psychoanalysis is the product of this
feedback, the magical fulfillmentof its own prophecy.
76.
Emphasismine. SE 3, p. 204.
77.
SE 18, p. 89.
GroupPsychology,
78.
Freud toJung,September19, 1907,in TheFreud/Jung
Letters,
p. 88.
79.
GustavAschaffenburg,
"Die Beziehung des sexuellen Lebens zur Entstehungvon Nerven-und
medizinische
53 (September11, 1906), p. 1796.
Geisteskrankheiten,"
Miinchener
Wochenschrift
80.
Erickson,AdvancedTechniques
ofHypnosis,
p. 19.
34
OCTOBER
6. Let us examine the seductiontheoryfromthispointofview.The seduction

theoryis a theoryof the sexualetiology of hysteriaand, more generally,of the
of defense."The idea thatsexualityplaysa role in neurosishas
"psycho-neuroses
become so self-evident,
so natural thatwe nevereven ask how it came to Freud.
Afterall, whydid he come to viewthe traumathathe firstevokedwithBreueras a
sexual trauma?Was thissome stunningdiscoverymade bythe clinician
specifically
Sigmund Freud? That is what he has alwayssuggested,as much before as after
abandoning the seduction theory,insistingthat experience literallyforced him
into givingsexualitythisrole.81If we followthe chronologyof the lettersto Fliess
however,it becomes obvious that this is nothingbut a handylegend,
attentively,
to
designed coverup whatwereoriginallyhighlyspeculativehypotheses.
As matterof fact,it is verystrikingto see to what extentthese hypotheses
precedethe clinical material that they are supposed to explain. As Malcolm
Macmillan has shown,the idea of a sexual etiologyfirstcame fromthe workof
George MillerBeard,whose hazyconcept of "neurasthenia,"
undulylegitimizedby
Charcot,seems to have furnishedthe originalpointof theoreticalcontactbetween
Fliessand Freud.82In his 1884 SexualNeurasthenia,
Beard evokedthe expenditureof
"nerve force"due to sexual problems as oneof the causes of neurasthenia,and
Freud,at the startof 1893,boldlyradicalizedthispointofview:"It maybe takenas
a recognized fact that neurasthenia is a frequentconsequence of an abnormal
sexual life. The assertion however,which I wish to make and testbyobservation
We
[emphasismine] is thatneurastheniaactuallycan onlybe a sexual neurosis."8s
do not know what Freud's basis for this highlyspeculativehypothesismay have
been, and the patientson whom he "tested"it seem to have been as surprisedas
we are. Letterof October 6, 1893: "The sexual businessattractspeople who are all
stunned and then go awaywon over afterhaving exclaimed, 'No one has ever
asked me about that before!"'84Would Freud have "found" sexualityin neurasthenia and the "actual neuroses" if he had not looked so activelyfor them?
Letter of November 27, 1893: "The sexual business is becoming more firmly
consolidated,the contradictionsare fadingaway.... When I take a case forthorough repair,everythingis confirmedand sometimesthe seeker findsmore than
he wishes."85
As for the hypothesisof a sexual etiologyforhysteria,and for the "psycho81.
Among so manyothersimilarpassages,see "The Aetiologyof Hysteria":"thesinglingout of the
sexual factorin the aetiologyof hysteriaspringsat least fromno preconceivedopinion on mypart.
The twoinvestigators
as whose pupil I began mystudiesof hysteria,Charcotand Breuer,werefarfrom
having any such presupposition; in fact theyhad a personal disinclinationto it which I originally
shared. Only the most laborious and detailed investigationshave converted me, and that slowly
onPsycho-Analysis,
SE 11, p. 40.
enough, to the viewI hold to-day"(SE 3, p. 199). See also FiveLectures
82.
Malcolm Macmillan, FreudEvaluated: The Completed
Arc (North Holland: Elsevier Science
PublishersB. V., 1991), chap. 5.
83.
DraftB (February8, 1893), p. 39.
Letters,
84.
Ibid., p. 57.
85.
Ibid., p. 61.
35
neuroses"in general, it appears to have been introducedinitiallyforthe sake of

symmetry,without any clinical basis whatsoever. On May 15 and again on
September29, 1893, Freud announced thathe was goingto attackthe question of
the sexual etiologyof hysteria:"I happen to have veryfewnew sexualia. I shall
soon starttacklinghysteria."86
Then, for two years,there is hardlya mention of
in
hysteria,except, once again, a highlyspeculativevein.87It is not till October 8,
1895, thatFreud finallyformulateshis seduction theory:"I am on the scentof the
followingstrictpreconditionof hysteria,namely,thata primarysexual experience
(beforepuberty),accompanied byrevulsionand fright,musthave takenplace; for
obsessionalneurosis,thatit musthave happened, accompanied bypleasure."88
Note
the expression"musthave taken place." This "strictpreconditionforhysteria"is
once again nothingbut pure intellectualspeculation on the respectiveroles of
unpleasure and pleasure in hystericaland obsessionalneuroses.But onlya month
later, Freud finds the firstclinical confirmationof his new theory.Letter of
November 12, 1895: "Today I am able to add thatone of the cases gave mewhatI
Whatadmirable
(sexual shock-that is,infantileabuse in male hysteria!)."89
expected
[in regard
foresight!As Freud would writelater,"Mostof myhunches in neuroticis
to neuroses] subsequentlyturnedout to be true."90They sure did. Three months
after his firstclinical confirmation,in his "Further Remarks on the NeuroPsychosesof Defense" (February1896), Freud was alreadypubliclyannouncingno
less than thirteen cases confirming his new etiology. His lecture on "The
Aetiologyof Hysteria,"deliveredin April,puts the numberat eighteen. (This, by
the way,did not preventFreud frombraggingin the same article thathis results
were "based on a laborious individualexaminationof patientswhichhas in most
cases taken up a hundredor morehoursof work"91-an unlikely figure if we consider
the shorttime span between Freud's initialhunch and its first"confirmations.")

Had Freud not stopped in time,his statisticswould no doubt have soon overtaken
thoseof the National Centeron Child Abuse!
Freud adds a supplementaryhypothesisthe followingmonth:the "presexual
sexual" scene, whose "posthumous"returnprovokesthe "pathologicaldefense,"
took place in the case of hysteria beforetheperson was four years old. Why is that?
Because the major symptomof hysteriais somatic "conversion,"so it must be

imagined that the traumaticmemorydates froma time when it could not be
"translatedinto verbal images."92A logical consequence of thisspeculativetimeregressionis that the sexual assault must have been particularlyperverse,and
86.
Ibid., pp. 48, 56.
87.
May 21, 1894, ibid.,p. 74; DraftD (May 1894?), pp. 76-77; DraftE (June 1894), p. 82; DraftH
(January1895), pp. 11-112.
88.
Ibid., p. 141.
89.
Emphasismine. Ibid., p. 149.
90.
January24, 1897, ibid.,p. 226.
91.
Emphasismine. SE 3, p. 220.
92.
May30, 1896,in Letters,
p. 188.
36
OCTOBER
Here again it is
perpetrated,in all likelihood,bya person in the immediatefamily.
a matterof pure hypothesis,
whichFreud himselfadmits"stillawaitsconfirmation
fromindividualanalyses."93
Freud's patientshurriedto supplyit. As Freud wrote
on November 22, "My work on hysteriais progressingnicely"94-and for good
reason: when one looks formemoriesthatgo back to such a precocious age, one
will necessarilyfind them, especially if one uses a technique of the hypnotic
type. Indeed, could the patient refutethe scenes that he or she hallucinates
under the persistent"pressure"of the analyst,since theygo back to a time prior
to any memory-or at least any reliable memory?In the absence of anyobjective
verification, the hallucinatory intensity of the "scenes" provoked by the
must have been veryconvincing.Take the letterof December 17,
Druckprozedur
1896: "Willyoubelievethatthe reluctanceto drinkbeer and to shavewaselucidated
bya scene in whicha nurse sitsdownpodicenudo[withbare buttocks]in a shallow
shavingbowl filledwithbeer in order to let herselfbe licked,and so on?"95Letter
ofJanuary3, 1897: Freud succeeds in tyingone of his patient'svariousoral symptomsto the act of suckingthe paternalpenis. LetterofJanuary12: one of Freud's
patients has convulsive attacks because his nurse gave him a "lictus [licking] .. . in
the anus," and another because he had been similarlygamahuche,

as Sade would
say,byhis fatherbeforehe was one yearold.96
But thereis stillbetterto come, whicheerilyanticipatesthe currentreports
of "Satanic RitualAbuse" byAmericanpsychotherapists.
In the lastweeksof 1896,
Freud is reading Krafft-Ebing's
Sexualis,and certain passages in it
Psychopathia
renewhis interestin the witch-hunts
of the Middle Ages,a subjectthathad already
been the object of contradictorydiscussions by Charcot and Bernheim.97He
suddenly realizes that the stories of diabolic debauchery extorted by the
and so,
Inquisitorsbear a remarkableresemblanceto the storiesof his patients,98
by analogy,he deduces that the "satanic"cults and abuses evoked under torture
mustalso be real(and not suggested,as Bernheimhad claimed):99
93.
Ibid., p. 187.
94.
Ibid., p. 204.
95.
Ibid., p. 218.
96.
Ibid., pp. 223-24.
97. January3, 1897, ibid.,p. 219. On thissubject,see Swales,"Freud,JohannWeier,and the Status
of Seduction,"and "Freud,Krafft-Ebing,
and the Witches:The Role of Krafft-Ebing
in Freud's Flight
into Fantasy"(New York:privatelypublished by the author,1983; reprintedin SigmundFreud:Critical
Assessments).
98. January17, 1897,in Letters,
p. 224.
99.
"All these storiesof Sabbath,of succubi,of incubi,all these diabolic scenes were nothingother
than suggested hallucinatoryphenomena; all these scenes, all these turpitudescan be artificially
produced by hypnoticsuggestion,either as dreams that are actuallyexperienced, or as retroactive
thatleave in the mind of those subjectedto the suggestionan impressionof absolute
memory-illusions
truth.The bewitchedwerereportingall thisas ifit had actuallytakenplace, and the sorcerersthemselves
were confessingto it" (Bernheim,Hypnotisme,
suggestion,
psychotherapie,
pp. 12-13). This passage,which
showsthatcurrent-day
"False MemorySyndrome"has distinguishednineteenth-century
credentials,is
translationin Swales,"Freud,Katharina,and the First'Wild Analysis,"'in
quoted in a slightlydifferent
Freud:Appraisalsand Reappraisals,
vol. 3, ed. Paul E. Stepansky(Hillsdale, N.J.:AnalyticPress,1988), pp.
37
It is as though in the perversions,of which hysteriais the negative,
we have before us a remnant of a primeval sexual cult. .. . I dream,
therefore,of a primeval devil religionwith rites that are carried on

secretly,and understand the harsh therapyof the witches'judges.
Connecting linksabound.oo00
As more recent theoreticiansof "Satanic Ritual Abuse" would put it, there is a
transmissionof the abuse, each generationof "cultsurvivors"
"transgenerational"
exercising the same perverse violence that programmedit upon the following
generation.The faithfulEckstein,at anyrate,immediatelygot the message.Letter
ofJanuary17: "Ecksteinhas a scene [here Masson feelsthe need to add in brackets:
"thatis, remembers"]where the diabolus sticksneedles into her fingersand then
places a candy on each drop of blood."101One week later,letterofJanuary24:
"Imagine,I obtained a scene about the circumcisionof a girl.The cuttingoffof a
piece of the labium minor (which is even shortertoday),suckingup the blood,
afterwhichthe child was givena piece of the skinto eat."'02If it is truethatFreud
"[was] read[ing] his own thoughtsinto other people,"03oas Fliess later accused,
here we have perhapsa nearlyliteralillustrationof it. In the same letterofJanuary
24, 1897: "I readone day that the gold the devil gives his victimsregularlyturns
into excrement;and thenextday Mr. E, who reports that his nurse had money
This is
deliria,suddenlytold me ... thatLouise's moneyalwayswas excrement."104
mind readingin real time!
7. Summarizingthe seduction theory,Herman writes:"What he [Freud]
heard was appalling.Repeatedlyhis patientstold him of sexual assault,abuse, and
incest."losNot so. It was Freudwho began speaking of sexual abuse, incest, and
satanic cults,not his patients.Justlike Masson, feministcriticsof psychoanalysis
like Herman are victims of the ex post facto mythforged by Freud himself,
claimingthathe was fooled at firstby the fantasystoriesofhispatients.In reality,
there is everyreason to doubt that these storieswere spontaneous or that they
even had the consistencyof truestories.Paul Chodoffand AlexanderSchusdek,106
in the 1960s,werethe firstto emphasizethispoint:
directedagainstCharcot,who equated the vari154-55, nn. 46, 47. Bernheim'sremarkswere implicitly
ous stigmatadiaboliof the possessed withthe specific(i.e., nonsuggested)"stigmata"of grandehystrie
(see Charcot and Paul Richer,Les Demoniaquesdans l'art (Paris: Delahaye et Lecrosnier,1887). It is
worthnotingthatBernheim'sinterestin the legal implicationsof suggestionhad been piqued initially bya murdercase in EasternEurope, in whicha rabbi'sson had testifiedthathe had seen his father
rituallymurdera Christianchild.
100. January24, 1897,in Letters,
p. 227.
101. Ibid., pp. 224-25.
102. Ibid., p. 227.
103. August7, 1901,ibid.,p. 447.
104. Emphasismine. Ibid., p. 227.
105. Herman, Traumaand Recovery,
p. 13.
106. Paul Chodoff,"A Critique of Freud's Theory of InfantileSexuality,"TheAmerican
Journalof
38
OCTOBER
[I]n the 1896 paper, "The Etiologyof Hysteria,"Freud describes how

immenselydifficultit is to wrestthe memoriesof seductionsfromhis
patients,how theyprotestand deny,and how theyinsistthattheyhave
no feeling of recollecting the traumatic scenes. .. . It is legitimate to
of the memoriesproduced under such consuspectthatthe uniformity

in hysteria,
ditions,whichFreud adduced as proofof theiruniversality
of Freud's "convictions."107
was a product,rather,of the uniformity
This has since been amply confirmedby the meticulous revisioniststudies of
Frank Cioffi,Peter Swales,Jean Schimek,AnthonyStadlen, Allen Esterson,Max
Scharnberg,Han Israals, and Morton Schatzman:108Freud literallyimposedhis
arbitraryconstructionson his patients,piecing them togetherlike a "puzzle"'09
material.
fromdoubtful,fragmentary
Does thismean thatFreud was guiltyof bad faithwhenin 1914 he claimed to
have been led astrayby "the statementsmade by patientsin which theyascribed
theirsymptomsto passive sexual experiences in the firstyears of childhood"?"0
This is whatsome of the authorsI havejust cited affirm(notablyIsraSls-Schatzman
and Esterson),but it seems to me thaton preciselythispoint theirdemystifying
zeal (withwhich I sympathize)misses its target.Crazyas it may sound, Freud's
patients-or at least some of them-really did "spontaneously"tell him everythingthathe wantedthem to say.Even thoughit is oftenhard to separateFreud's
constructions from the authentic stories of his patients, the letters to Fliess
generallyleave no doubt on the subject.Ratherthan accuse Freud of retroactively
inventingstoriesthatdid not exist,it seems more plausibleto me to admitthathis
patients activelyresponded to his suggestions,"reproducing"all the scenes that
he expected of them.
This hypothesis,proposed a whileago byMalcolm Macmillan,would explain
certainanomalies noted bymore recentcommentators.111
Indeed, in his "Further
Remarkson the Neuro-Psychosesof Defense" (as well as in "Heredityand the
Aetiologyof the Neuroses"),Freud saysthathe "completed"an analysisof thirteen
cases of hysteria.112
Of these thirteencases, he says,sevenhad been the object of
sexual assaults by other children, and six by nearby adults, like nurses; Freud
123 (November 5, 1966), pp. 507-17; Alexander Schusdek,"Freud's 'Seduction Theory': A
Psychiatry
2 (1966), pp. 159-66.
Reconstruction,"
oftheBehavioralSciences
JournaloftheHistory
107. Chodoff,Freud'sTheory
ofInfantile
Sexuality,
pp. 508-9.
108. Frank Cioffi,"Was Freud a Liar?" TheListener(February7, 1974), pp. 172-74; Swales,"Freud,
and the Witches";"The Cradle
Johann Weier,and the Statusof Seduction" and "Freud,Krafft-Ebing,
of Neurosis,"TimesLiterary
(July6, 1984), pp. 743-44; Schimek,"Factand Fantasy";Anthony
Supplement
Stadlen (unpublished lectures); Allen Esterson,SeductiveMirage(Chicago: Open Court, 1993); Max
NatureofFreud'sObservations,
vols. 1-2, Acta UniversitatisUpsaliensis,
Scharnberg,TheNon-Authentic
UppsalaStudiesin Education47-48 (1993); Israils and Schatzman,"The Seduction Theory,"pp. 23-59.
109. "The Aetiologyof Hysteria,"SE 3, p. 205.
110. On theHistory
SE 14, p. 17.
Movement,
ofthePsycho-Analytic
111. Malcolm Macmillan,"Freud's Expectations and the Childhood Seduction Theory,"Australian
29 (1977), expanded in Macmillan,FreudEvaluated,chap. 8.
JournalofPsychology
112. SE 3, pp. 152, 163.
Freudand theSeduction
Neurotica:
Theory
39
cases
doesn't mention parents.Four monthslater,however,Freud claims eighteen
new
and
he
that
this
initial
thirteen,plus five
ones),
(that is, the
says
group is
into
three
this
time
without
divided
givingprecise figures:children
subgroups,
abused by another child, childrenabused by strangers,and childrenabused by a
nearbyadult, "unhappilyall too often,a close relative."And he adds that the
last-mentionedsubgroup "consistsof the much more numerous cases,"which is
bythe figures.l3In fact,even ifwe suppose that
prettystrangeifone goes strictly
abused
of
children
the subgroup
byunknownadults onlyhas twomembers,there
in
I
unless
am
cannot,
wrong mycalculations,be more than ninechildrenabused
or
a
adult
parent: 18 - (7 + 2) = 9. It seems fairlyclear thatsome of the
by nearby
cases initiallyabused by another child got implicitlyrecycledinto victimsof an
assault.
intrafamilial
But that is not all. A little more than a year later,in his famous letterof
recantationof September 21, 1897, Freud states that "in all cases" thefatherwas
designatedas the guiltyparty--afactthat he did not mention in a single one of
his articles(and whichhe took more than a quartercenturyto reveal publiclyin
his Autobiographical
Study,as if he was particularlyashamed of it).114We must
thereforeadmit thatin slightlyless than twoyears,a relativelystable samplingof
by nearbyadults or
by other children,then mostly
patients15were abused mostly
How
can
this
and
the
father!
finallyalwaysby
strangelyelastic statisticbe
parents,
The
Three
themselves.
feministhypothesisof
explained?
hypotheses present
Herman: Freud knewfromthe verystartthatthe fatherwas guilty,but preferred
to hide thisfactin his published accounts.1i6The "revisionist"
hypothesisofAllen
Estersonand FrederickCrews:Freud said whateverhe feltlike and put wordsthat
were neverspoken in the mouthsof his patients.117
The "hypnotic"hypothesisof
Freud's colleagues: Freud said whateverhe felt like, and his patientsfaithfully
repeated
afterhim.In otherwords,the same patientssuccessivelyclaimed that they
had been abused bychildren,by nurses,and bythe father,all in accordance with
the preferredtheory of the moment (and theystopped-how strange-after
Freud definitively
abandoned his theory).
113. "The Aetiologyof Hysteria,"ibid.,p. 208.
114. See Schimek'sexcellentchronologicalreconstructionin "Factand Fantasy,"pp. 955-60.
115. See letterof May 1896: "[T]his year for the firsttime my consultingroom is empty.... [F]or
weekson end I see no new faces,cannot begin anynew treatment,and ... none of the old ones is completed" (Letters,
p. 185).
116. "Recognizing the implicitchallenge to patriarchalvalues, Freud refused to identifyfathers
publiclyas sexual aggressors.Though in his privatecorrespondencehe cited 'seduction bythe father'
as the 'essentialpoint' in hysteria,he was neverable to bringhimselfto make his statementin public.
Scrupulouslyhonest and courageous in other respects,Freud falsifiedhis incest cases" (Herman,
Incest,p. 9).
Father-Daughter
117. "Freud'searlypatientsdid notrecountstoriesof infantileseductions;these storieswere actually
analyticreconstructionswhich he foistedon them" (Esterson,SeductiveMirage,p. 29). "In 1896 the
and siblings,
alleged seducersof infantsweresaid to havebeen governesses,teachers,servants,strangers,
but in laterdescriptionsFreud retrospectively
so thata properlyoedipal
changed mostof themtofathers
Wars,pp. 60-61).
spin could be placed on the recycledmaterial"(Crews,TheMemory
40
OCTOBER
I tend to believe that this last hypothesisis the correct one, for it alone
agrees withthe chronologyof the lettersto Fliess,in which Freud's patientsdo
mention "paternal" scenes (contraryto what Crews says),"18 but only afterthe
publicationof "The Aetiologyof Hysteria"(contraryto whatHerman suspects).119
And I believe that it was also the implicithypothesisof Freud himselfwhen he
abandoned (or began to abandon) his cherished "neurotica."Indeed, whydid
Freud abandon his seduction theory? Innumerable explanations have been
offeredforthat mysteriousepisode, but at least one thingis sure: Freud did not
change his mind forlack of clinical"evidence."Quite the contrary,he had plenty
of it,and it is simplynot truethatFreudwas "nothearingenough seductionstories
fromhis patients,and thatthe storieshe heard did not fitthe patternthe theory
required."'20The reasons he advances in his letterof September 21, 1897, are
the authenticity
of the alleged
merelyreasons,themselvesspeculative,fordoubting
thathe had obtained. I listthem here in no particularorder: an
"confirmations"
absence of infantile"scenes" in the psychoses,where theyshould have appeared
spontaneously because of the lack of defense; a total absence of conclusive
therapeuticresults(whereasFreud had publiclyclaimed to have "completed"the
analyses of eighteen cases!);121the impossibilityof distinguishingbetween the
"truthand fictionthathas been connectedwithaffect";l22
and finally,
the statistical
But
all
of
these
reasons
had
been
of
the
available
"paternalaetiology."
improbability
to Freud before.So, if he decided to take them seriouslyat thispoint, it is likely
that this was because the "influencingmachine" that he had put in motion was
workingall toowell,so well thathe could no longer believe in the storieshe had
118. I agree on this point withJames Hopkins' contention (later acknowledgedby Crews himself)
that"Freud's [unpublished]writingsof 1897 ... make clear thatduring 1897 he held a theoryof paternal abuse,"althoughI would certainlybe loath tojump withHopkins to the conclusionthatthe scenes
of paternal abuse "were liable to arise withoutsuggestion" (Hopkins, letter to the editors, "The
UnknownFreud: An Exchange,"NewYorkReviewofBooks41, no. 3 [February3, 1994], p. 34; reprinted
in Crews,TheMemory
Wars,p. 81). The paternaletiologyappears forthe firsttime in a letterto Fliess
of December 6, 1896, and clearly occupies Freud's mind until at least April 1898 (see lettersof
January24, 1897; February8, 1897; April 28, 1897; May 2 and 31, 1897;July7, 1897; September21,
1897; October 3, 1897; December 12, 1897; April27, 1898).
119. Besides, Herman's cover-uphypothesisdoes not tallywith the abstractof "The Aetiologyof
Hysteria"included in the veryofficialbibliographyof his scientificwritingsthat Freud submittedin
May 1897 when he applied for the position of "Professorextraordinarius"(Krafft-Ebing
being his
referee): "In theircontent [the infantilesexual experiences] mustbe described as 'perversions,'and
those responsibleareas a ruletobelookedamongthepatient'snearest
relatives"
(emphasismine,SE 3, p. 254).
Since Freud is even more explicithere than he had been the yearbefore,it seems fairlyobviousthathe
was quite preparedto go publicwithhis incesttheory.
120. MiltonI. Klein and David Tribich,"Blame the Child," TheSciences22, no. 8 (November 1982),
p. 18. As Frank Cioffihas cogentlyargued, the abandonmentof the seduction theoryis not a case of
in Grfinbaum'sIndictmentof Popper and
(Cioffi,"'Exegetical Myth-Making'
Popperian "falsification"
Exonerationof Freud,"in Mind,Psychoanalysis
and Science,
ed. PeterClarkand CrispinWright[Oxford:
Basil Blackwell,1988], p. 64).
121. No later than eight days afterhis lecture on "The Aetiologyof Hysteria,"Freud was already
confessingto Fliess that"none of the old [cases] are completed" (May 4, 1896, in Letters,
p. 185).
122. Ibid., p. 264.
41
extortedfromhis patients.As he wrotein 1914: "This aetiologybrokedownunder

theweightof itsown improbability."'123
Now,all thiswas bound to make Freudwonderabout thewayhe had obtained
these pseudomemoriesof sexual abuse. If the sceneswere not real,wheredid they
come from?Freud would saymuch laterthattheycame fromthe Oedipal fantasies
of his femalepatients(note the feminine,as ifhe did not have male patientstoo).
But in 1897,Freud had notyetcome up withthishandyexcuse; so the onlythingit
could have been was this: the scenes camefromhim-which is preciselywhat his
colleagues had believed and objected all along. That this is what Freud himself
thoughtis indicatedbya passage fromthe letterwhere,afterhavingadmittedthe
failureof his cures, he evokes "the possibilityof explainingto myselfthe partial
In the contextof the time thisis a
successesin otherways,in theusualfashion."i24
clear allusion to the eliminationof the symptomsby suggestionand/or autosuggestion. Freud is here admittingthat his famous
"psychoanalytic"treatmentis
'
finallynothingbut "suggestivepsychotherapy" la Bernheim.Twentyyears later,
in An Autobiographical
Study,Freud would be even more explicit: "Undertheinfluence
of the technicalprocedurewhichI used at the time,the majority of my patients repro-
duced from their childhood scenes in which theywere sexually seduced by a

So afterall, itwas not the patients'Oedipal unconsciousthat
grown-upperson."125
had forgedtheseaberrantstories,but the Druckprozedur
of Dr. Freud.
It is true that this admissionin the Autobiographical
Studyis followedby the
usual denial: "I do not believe even now that I forcedthe seduction-fantasies
on
But thisdenial mustfinallybe exposed for
mypatients,thatI 'suggested'them."''126
whatit reallyis: a big lie, the protonpseudosof psychoanalysis.
Indeed, it is clearly
refutedby a letterthatFreud addressed to Max Eitingtonin August1933, shortly
afterFerenczi's death. In that letter,which Masson exhumed from the Jones
Archives, where it had carefully been hidden from public curiosity,Freud
denounces the technicalinnovationsproposed by Ferenczi towardthe end of his
lifeand comparesthemexplicitlyto his own seductiontheory:
His source is whatthe patientstell him when he manages to put them
into whathe himselfcalls a statesimilartohypnosis.
He then takeswhat
he hears as revelations,but whatone reallygets are the phantasiesof
patients about their childhood, and not the real story.Myfirstgreat
etiologicalerroralso arose in this veryway. The patientssuggestsomethingto
it.127
him,and he thenreverses
123. On theHistory
SE 14, p. 17.
Movement,
ofthePsycho-Analytic
124. Letters,
p. 265.
125. Emphasismine. SE 20, p. 33.
126. Ibid., p. 35.
127. Emphasis mine. Quoted in Masson, TheAssaulton Truth,p. 182. The true significanceof this
letterclearlyescapes Masson,who is contentwithrepeatingthe usual Freudian platitude:"WhatFreud
states here explicitlyis that memories of seduction (and, by extension, of real traumas) are not
memoriesat all, but fantasies."In reality,
whatFreud stateshere (and statesnowhereelse so explicitly)
42
OCTOBER
8. ClearlyFreud knewverywell that the scenes of seduction had been the

directresultof the hypnotic-suggestive
method and
aspects of his psychoanalytic
the veritablefoliea' deux that it unleashed between him and his patients. The
thisin public,neitherat the time nor afterward.Masson
troubleis heneveradmitted
claims that "the letter [of September 21, 1897] symbolizesthe beginningof an
internal reconciliation with his colleagues."128Not so. Freud, on the contrary,
carefullyhid fromhis colleagues the factthathe had renounced his theory,and
he did such a good job of it that L6wenfeld-the "stupid"L6wenfeld-was still
asking in 1904 "to what extent he [Freud] still holds to his views published in
1896."129In 1905, referringto the realityof the scenes of seduction,Freud still
insists:"I cannotadmitthatin mypaper on the 'AetiologyofHysteria'I exaggerated
the frequencyor importanceof that influence."130
And a year later: "I ... overestimated the frequency of such events (though in otherrespectstheywerenot open to
As Schimeck has shown,it is not till 1914 that Freud begins to admit
doubt)."131
publiclythe phantasmaticnatureof those "scenes,"and it is not till 1925 thathe
mentionshis patients' accusationsagainsttheirfather-and not till 1932 does he
(who, forthe record,appears nowherein
pull fromhis hat the "seductive"mother
the lettersto Fliess!)132
"I shall not tell it in Dan, nor speak of it in Askelon, in the land of the
Philistines":133
Freud neveradmittedhis real reason forabandoning the seduction
theory,forthatwould have been an admission,not onlyof the defeat,but of the
method.On the contrary,
he continuedto support
dangersof his "psychoanalytic"
his theorypubliclyand even,fora certaintime,cynicallyto applyit in his practice,
all the while searchingfora wayto get himselfout of the cul-de-sac
he had gotten
himselfinto. The restis well known:the birthof "psychoanalysis
proper."In the
weeks thatfollow,Freud suddenlydiscoversin his "self-analysis"
thathe had been
in love withhis motherand jealous of his father,and then concludes,based on an
analysisof Sophocles' OedipusRex,thatthisis a "universaleventin childhood. ...
Was this,as is normallysaid,
Everyonewas once a budding Oedipus in fantasy."34
is that these fantasiesof seduction were fantasieselicitedunderhypnosis,
hence liable to be cases of
suggestionand/or autosuggestion.
128. Ibid., p. 110.
129. Lowenfeld,Die Psychischen
(Wiesbaden:J. F. Bergmann,1904), p. 296 (quoted
Zwangserscheinungen
in TheAssaulton Truth,p. 121). L6wenfeld,who had been in correspondencewithFreud, mentioned
thataccordingto the latter,obsessionalsymptomsdid not stem"directlyfromreal sexual experiences,
but fromfantasieswhichattachthemselvesto these experiences."But, as L6wenfeldjudiciouslyadded,
"This modificationdoes not change the basic tenetsof the theory."One findsa similarsummaryof
Freud'stheoryin Moll, TheSexualLifeoftheChild,p. 190.
130. Three
SE 7, p. 190.
Essayson theTheory
ofSexuality,
131. Emphasismine."MyViewson the PartPlayedbySexualityin theAetiologyof the Neuroses,"SE 7,
p. 274.
132. See "Female Sexuality":"girlsregularlyaccuse theirmotherof seducing them" (SE 21, pp. 232,
238).
133. Freud to Fliessof September21, 1897,in Letters,
p. 265.
134. Freud to Fliessof October 15, 1897,ibid.,p. 272.
43
the dazzling"discovery"of the Oedipus complex?Not at all: the universality

of the
Oedipus complex is affirmedin a perfectlyarbitraryfashion,withno supporting
clinical materialwhatsoever(except forthe particularlysuspect"self-analysis"),
in
order to findan ad hoc explanation forhis patients' constantstoriesof paternal
seduction. The same goes for the Fliessian idea of infantilesexuality,to which
Freud progressively
ifthe Freudianchild is
gravitatesin the monthsthatfollow:135
"polymorphously
perverse,"it is because Freud had to findan explanationforhis
patients'torridstoriesof sodomyand fellatio,not at all because he had anyempirical evidence of it.
In sum: the Oedipus complex, infantilesexuality,the wish-fantasies,
all of
Freud's self-proclaimed"discoveries" are arbitraryconstructions designed to
explain away his patient's storiesof incest and perversionwhile simultaneously
excusingthe method thathad provokedthem.Freud neverabandoned his seduction theory,nor hypnosis,nor suggestion.He simplydenied them, attributing
them to his patients' stories, to theirunconscious wishes, and attributingthe
hypnotic-suggestiveelements of the analytic cure to their"transferencelove."
Masson, feminists,and child-abuse activiststell us that Freud covered up the
despicable actions of pedophile fathers.Not so. He covered up the hypnosisthat
allowed him to obtain the stories,while leaving the astonished world with an
Oedipal unconscious.The Oedipus complex is a hypnoticmyth,superimposedon
the no less hypnotic mythof "infantileseduction," and it serves no purpose
whatsoeverto oppose the one mythto the other,fortheyare intrinsically
bound
together.True, we are all obsessed withincest,but do we knowthatit is because
we are livingin a worldfashionedbythe hypnoticpact betweenDr. Freud and his
patients?Do the statisticiansof the National Center on Child Abuse know that
theyare completinga researchprogramthatwas initializeda centuryago on the
basis of a samplingof eighteenViennese hysterics
under hypnosis?
135. See letterof November 14, 1897, ibid., p. 279: "We mustassume thatin infancythe release of
sexualityis not yetso much localized as it is later,so thatthe zones whichare laterabandonned (and
perhaps the whole surfaceof the body as well) also instigatesomethingthat is analogous to the later
release of sexuality."On thisquestion,see Sulloway,Freud,Biologist
oftheMind,chap. 6.

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen - Neurotica Freud and The Seduction Theory

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen - Neurotica Freud and The Seduction Theory

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Neurotica: Freud and the Seduction Theory

Author(s): Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen and Douglas Brick

thatthesereportswereuntrueand so came to understandthathysterical

Neurotica:Freud and theSeductionTheory

and this discoveryof the "battered-childsyndrome"made a strongimpression,

reason to attributethisobsessionwithreal incestto some good old Oedipal fantasy

Neurotica:Freud and theSeductionTheory

in its wake a general redefinition of the psychotherapeutic field in terms of

protestagainst the diagnosis of "MultiplePersonalityDisorder,"emphasizingthe

Masson asserted in his 1984 The Assault on Truth?21

Neurotica:Freud and theSeductionTheory

Freud's no less pressingdesire to reconcile himselfwithhis male colleagues,who

Neurotica:Freud and theSeductionTheory

priorireason to be scandalized by the sexual theoryof hysteriaproposed by their

"Anyonewho can givehis questionsa suggestivetwist,whetherdone consciouslyor

Neurotica:Freud and theSeductionTheory

We are not in a position to force anythingon the patient about the

whichtheyrespond to suggestionsmaybe reiterated,as the weak point in the methodof investigation

to find,in a way that he seemed to be livingthroughit with all the

we shall in the end conquer every resistance by emphasizing the

This martialtherapeuticvoluntarism,whichnow appears again in the writingsof

patients. As long as hypnosis was identified with the hysterical"state," itself

"hypnoid"mechanism of dissociation of consciousness. The final rupturewith

has nothingto do withthe

In short,just because at some point Freud stopped inducingsomnambulic

type.Under Freud's insistent"pressure,"his patientsseem to have gone through

happens in the case of other forgotten material, they have no feeling

6. Let us examine the seductiontheoryfromthispointofview.The seduction

Neurotica:Freud and theSeductionTheory

neuroses"in general, it appears to have been introducedinitiallyforthe sake of

the shorttime span between Freud's initialhunch and its first"confirmations.")

Because the major symptomof hysteriais somatic "conversion,"so it must be

the anus," and another because he had been similarlygamahuche,

It is as though in the perversions,of which hysteriais the negative,

we have before us a remnant of a primeval sexual cult. .. . I dream,

therefore,of a primeval devil religionwith rites that are carried on

[I]n the 1896 paper, "The Etiologyof Hysteria,"Freud describes how

of the memoriesproduced under such consuspectthatthe uniformity

extortedfromhis patients.As he wrotein 1914: "This aetiologybrokedownunder

duced from their childhood scenes in which theywere sexually seduced by a

8. ClearlyFreud knewverywell that the scenes of seduction had been the

Neurotica:Freud and theSeductionTheory

the dazzling"discovery"of the Oedipus complex?Not at all: the universality

Potrebbero piacerti anche