The Freudian Coverup

The Freudian Coverup

The Freudian Cover-up is a theory first popularized by social worker Florence Rush in the 1970s which asserts that Sigmund Freud intentionally ignored evidence that his patients were victims of sexual abuse. The theory argues that in developing his theory of infant sexuality, he misinterpreted his patients' claim of sexual abuse as symptoms of repressed incestous desire. Therefore, Freud claimed that children who reported sexual abuse by adults had either imagined or fantasized the experience.