“I no Longer Believe”: Did Freud Abandon the Seduction Theory?

Abstract

Recent accounts of the seduction theory and the question of its abandonment have emphasized the continuity of Freud's work before and after the seduction theory, claiming that Freud did not abandon his concern with the event of seduction but rather came to appreciate that an understanding of fantasy was also essential. This claim is challenged. It is shown that Freud did abandon the passionate concerns of his seduction theory for the most part; that he left behind his early interest in reconstructing unconscious infantile incest and focused instead on later, conscious seduction; that he at times clearly reduced apparent paternal incest to fantasy; that he turned away from the phenomenology of incest he had begun to develop; and that he theoretically nullified the value of the difference between real and fantasied seduction. It is also shown that, contrary to a persistent concern in psychoanalytic history, attention to actual seduction need not detract from the essential psychoanalytic concern with fantasy and infantile sexuality. Thinking about incest specifically illuminates the capacity for fantasizing, the core of the Freudian psyche. In this way the intuition of the seduction theory that there is something of distinctive psychoanalytic significance about incest finds support.

Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century

“…He is also known for his seduction theory, for instance, the proper interpretation of which has been debated by feminists for decades. Depending on which stance you take, this theory either tells us that young women have been largely traumatized by very real sexual violence at the hands of their male elders (see Kleinplatz, 2018 for a discussion of this interpretation) or that at the core of feminine sexuality is the fantasy of incest, the notion that young women masochistically wish to be violated by men, including their fathers and other adult male family members or adult men in their lives (see Ahbel-Rappe, 2006 for a full discussion of both perspectives). Here, I will focus specifically on Freud's later work on female psychosexual development, specifically his 1931 essay on this topic, as it is this thread that appears to have had the greatest effect on popular ideas about female sexuality within contemporary psychology, about Freud and psychoanalysis more generally, and about Freudian or psychoanalytic theories of sex and gender.…”

La seducción sexual infantil: revolución y repercusiones de la teoría de Freud

“…Tercero, discontinuaciones o abandonos abruptos de la psicoterapia, aún en los casos en que se estaban logrando progresos en el descubrimiento de los traumas. Cuarto, la mejoría fragmentaria del cuadro podía ser comprendida de manera "corriente", vale decir, no como "consecuencia específica de las interpretaciones y, por tanto, no constituyen una prueba inequívoca de la corrección de la teoría" y de la especificidad de la técnica 26,27 .…”

Comprehensive dictionary of psychoanalysis

“…This shift is viewed as monumental in the growth of psychoanalytic theory, and indeed it is so. This has led some people (e.g., Masson, 1984;Ahbel-Rappe, 2006) to conclude that Freud turned away from his recognition of the reality of child abuse. The fact, however, is that Freud never totally abandoned the 'seduction hypothesis'; he continued to regard it as one possible factor in the genesis of adult psychopathology (Freud, 1940a(Freud, [1938) alongside the more prevalent one energizing from oedipal fantasies.…”