Freud's Seduction Theory

Freud's seduction theory was a hypothesis posited in the mid-1890s by Sigmund Freud that he believed provided the solution to the problem of the origins of hysteria and obsessional neurosis. According to the theory, a repressed memory of an early childhood sexual abuse or molestation experience was the essential precondition for hysterical or obsessional symptoms, with the addition of an active sexual experience up to the age of eight for the latter.

In the traditional account of development of seduction theory, Freud initially thought that his patients were relating more or less factual stories of sexual mistreatment, and that the sexual abuse was responsible for many of his patients' neuroses and other mental health problems. Within a few years Freud abandoned his theory, concluding that the memories of sexual abuse were in fact imaginary fantasies.

An alternative account that has come to the fore in recent Freud scholarship emphasizes that the theory as posited by Freud was that hysteria and obsessional neurosis result from unconscious memories of sexual abuse in infancy. In the three seduction theory papers published in 1896, Freud stated that with all his current patients he had been able to uncover such abuse, mostly below the age of four. These papers indicate that the patients did not relate stories of having been sexually abused in early childhood; rather, Freud used the analytic interpretation of symptoms and patients' associations, and the exerting of pressure on the patient, in an attempt to induce the "reproduction" of the deeply repressed memories he posited. Though he reported he had succeeded in achieving this aim, he also acknowledged that the patients generally remained unconvinced that what they had experienced indicated that they had actually been sexually abused in infancy. Freud's reports of the seduction theory episode went through a series of changes over the years, culminating in the traditional story based on his last account, in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.