According to Freud’s seduction theory, nurture plays a causal role in shaping the mind by allowing experience to have an impact. According to this theory, repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse are what lead to hysteria and obsession neurosis. Infantile sexual abuse is the early introduction of sexual behaviour into the child’s experience, which is the source of all neuroses. Trauma produces emotions and ideas that are impossible to integrate. It is possible for an adult who had a typical, trauma-free childhood to contain and incorporate sexual feelings into a consistent sense of self. According to Freud, adults who were sexually abused as children experience unconscious memories and sensations that are incompatible with the main body of thoughts and feelings that make up their experience. The inability to assimilate experiences leads directly to psychic disorders. For some disorders, hysteria in particular, to manifest, unconscious memories of childhood sexual abuse was a prerequisite. A further requirement, however, was that the abuse must have left an unconscious memory.
Freud debates the validity of his seduction theory and ultimately develops the suspicion that it implies an improbably high prevalence of fathers engaging in incest and sexual abuse. The hypothesis that what seem to be memories of seduction are actually fantasies connected to the Entitlement complex and that they are an expression of the kid’s unconscious desire to seduce its father ultimately replaces the theory. However, Freud does not deny that child sexual abuse occurs and says in one of his final writings that it is common enough.
Freud is equating his theory of hysteria with the old-fashioned notion of witches’ possession. Hysteria, according to Freud, is always a delayed effect of prepubescent sexual abuse, typically committed by adults, as stated in his lecture. To cause hysterical symptoms, “the scenes must be present as unconscious memories.” The memory-trace of the childhood sexual trauma is activated in hysterical people, according to Freud. According to Freud, only his pressure technique and “a new method of psychoanalysis” can extract these subconscious memories of sexual traumas from childhood. This, according to Freud, is the only method for awakening the unconscious. Unconscious memories of childhood sexual abuse were the key to Freud’s theory of seduction. Freud looked for alternative theories to explain hysteria while publicly upholding his belief in his seduction theory. In January 1897, Freud wrote two letters to Response to these stimuli about witches, which form the core of his transitional phase. His interest in witches is evident from these letters, which also reveal that he ordered the Malleus, a mediaeval book on the subject. Freud compares his patients to the legends of the witches in his letters to Fliess. According to the inquisitors, witches occasionally imagined that the devil had sexually abused them. As time went on, Freud began to view memory with less confidence.
Freud later abandoned his belief that all incidents of hysteria were the result of childhood sexual abuse, but he never abandoned the idea that some cases were. Freud is not to blame for using an inquisitorial approach to extract from his patients the story lines of seduction he needed to support his theory. Instead, he attributes it to hysterics fabrications in their memories. According to this theory, repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse are what lead to hysteria and obsession neurosis. Infantile sexual abuse is the obvious reference of sexuality into the child’s experience, which is the source of all neuroses. Trauma produces emotions and ideas that are impossible to integrate.
Freud gave up on his hysteria/neuroses seduction theory in 1897. He identified four explanations for why he could no longer hold to his seduction theory:
- Had not allowed him to treat even one patient successfully.
- Given how frequently hysteria occurred, many fathers, including his own, would have to face accusations of sexual perversion.
- He thought that his unconscious mind probably couldn’t tell the difference between reality and fiction.
- He discovered that unconscious sexual memories from early childhood hardly ever surfaced in patients with advanced psychosis.
He gave up on his seduction theory before developing the Oedipus complex, which would eventually take its place.
Freud had a number of character traits that helped him become a major figure in 20th century thought, including self-assurance, infrequent sex, outstanding writing ability, and the capacity for close, secretive friendships. Most of these friendships ended unhappily, and Freud frequently felt oppressed by former friends and regarded them as enemies. Ambition, ambivalence toward father figures, moral courage, a keen sense of isolation, and a dislike of Americans during his formative years were among his other traits.
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