The Freudian Coverup - Background

Background

Early within Freud's career he believed that little girls often experienced sexual abuse, since most of his patients were predominantly women and consistently reported childhood instances of sexual molestation. Many of Freud's patients suffered from a common Victorian diagnosis, hysteria. Since his hysterical patients repeatedly reported sexual abuse, most often naming their fathers as the abusers, Freud drew a causal connection between sexual abuse and neurosis. This became the frame for the seduction theory, in which he pointed to a direct connection between sexual abuse in childhood and adult hysteria. According to Florence Rush, author of The Freudian Cover-up, this repeated and persistent incrimination of fathers by his patients made him uneasy, and led him to abandon the seduction theory. More at ease with the fantasy rather than reality of sexual abuse, Freud was even more comfortable when he could name the mother rather than the father as the seducer. Hence, the "Oedipal complex" came into fruition. Other feminists who supported Rush's claims are Susan Brownmiller, Louise Armstrong, and Diana Russell. Before Freud could conclude that the seduction by fathers was a fantasy, he had to be rid of his earlier theory. Since men did not complain of maternal seduction Freud limited the imagined abuse to a specific female problem. To remove the responsibility from fathers, Freud found it necessary to undermine the perceptions of his female patients.

Within the period between 1970s and 1980s arguments were made that Freud abandoned his initial beliefs in women's accounts of abuse (the seduction theory), and replaced it with the Oedipal theory; this illustrates the ways in which he withheld or altered information from his patients, which is unacceptable in a professional context. The Freudian Cover-up exposed Freud’s theory, the refusal to name the offender, but furthermore, one man's attempt to hide illegal or immoral sex practices. It was within this time that Victorian men were permitted to indulge in forbidden sex provided they managed to keep their indiscretions hidden. Freud, who regarded the incest taboo as vital to the advance of civilization, appeared to demand only that forbidden sex be practiced with tact and discretion so that the surface of Victorian respectability was in no way disturbed. Therefore, any attempt on the part of the child or her family to expose the violator exposes her own alleged innate sexual motives and shamed her more than the offender; concealment is her only recourse.