The theory of seduction is a psychoanalytical theory formulated by Sigmund Freud, and which he initially regarded as fundamental before definitively rejecting it in 1897. This theory, that the father of the psychoanalysis conceived like the " source of Nil" ( caput Nili ) of the Neurosis, connected an effective reality - the seduction , expressed in a way observable and quantifiable - and a theory at greater range, which can give an account of the totality of the psychogenesis and psychopathology of the individual through the concept of " Repression ".

Restricted and generalized theory of seduction

This theory of seduction " restreinte" to effective reality itself refers. The theory of seduction " généralisée" , it, relates to the remote repercussions of this effective reality with a " effect of after-coup" , where a traumatic event of the remote past is interpreted in the light of the present and causes then a suffering such as it is driven back in the unconscious one and is hidden in a past which does not cease being present. It is generalized by the extension of the idea of seduction, perversion and the application beyond only the Psychopathologie.

At the beginnings of Freud, the seduction was infantile and was presented in the form of " scènes" found, reminded and rebuilt by the subject, thanks to the analytical method, that Freud checked and against-checked near the entourage of the subject to the manner of the police investigations.

By “seduction”, Freud understood an early sexual experiment where the subject then child would have been confronted, passively and prematurely, with the sudden appearance of a sexuality of adult. In other words, a child is located in a state of immaturity, of incapacity compared to the experiment which arrives to him with an adult. This immaturity, unpreparedness, insufficiency or incapacity refer at the same time to the development biophysics and the psychosexual development.

What makes traumatism is the state of unpreparedness: fortuitous character in the Traumatic neurosis of adult and psychosexual immaturity in the child. In the two cases of figure, combined with unpreparedness are the arbitrary aspect of the sexual attack and the physical and mental impotence to be opposed to it.

This state of unpreparedness, at Freud, is a still insufficient psycho-somato-emotional totality in a child at his developmental stage which does not enable him to integrate adequately what occurs to him.

In other words, some " state infantile" psychic functions and sexual system, not necessarily of pure chronology, is necessary so that a fortuitous, arbitrary and inescapable experiment sexual develops later by an effect of the deferred action like remembering, a pathogenic action.

The obligatory partner of the seduction is the adult, which excludes the seduction from the sexual plays that practice the children between-them. For Freud, the adult is not any, but an adult " pervers" in its double direction of deviance as for the object in the Pedophilia and of deviance as for the goal in the arbitrary one and the coercion of the sex act. Until the total abandonment of its theory of seduction , Freud was due firmly to the perverse character of the father of the hysterical.

The general scenario could be as follows: an individual " A" fact an emotional request for tenderness to which an individual " B" give a sexual and even genital answer. The character of unpreparedness or fortuity is in the unexpected sexual answer compared to the emotional request on the psychic level and in sexual immaturity on the physical level. The character of perversion (perversion or parallel version) is in the diversion of the sex object " normal" and in the diversion of the goal of the agreement to a dissension by the arbitrary one and the physical or moral constraint.

The postulate poses a passive, weak and stripped part and the other active, authoritative and powerful part. In addition, the individual " B" can make a sexual and even genital request to which the individual " A" give an emotional answer of tenderness.

What poses problem in the restricted seduction of effective reality is the punctuation or cutting in element first in the circularity of the request-answer, like the circularity of egg and hen where the egg which leads to hen is as exact as the hen which leads to egg.

Since Freud postulates the passivity of the child compared to the activity of the adult, it is the latter which takes the initiative, by gestures and words. Freud describes the seduction like an aggression, an irruption or a violent intrusion, within the framework of a univocal and unilateral relation of attacker-attacked, transmitter-receiver.

As a train can hide another, which poses problem in the seduction generalized with a theory of the Refoulement in the Inconscient is that behind a scene is profiled some another which lets some have a presentiment of a third and so on to improbable a first original scene.

Like the geological process of sedimentation, it is about a sucession of layers and interpretations fantasmatic a posteriori or deferred action which can be contaminated mutually or to be faded or dye reciprocally the ones and the others.

What poses problem also is perversion in the multiplicity of the parallel versions or deviances possible where this Psychopathologie is to be revised and put in perspective in the wandering of human sexuality, the precariousness and the interchangeability of its goals and in the strangeness and the inaccessibility of its object. These problems arising or objections reveal a complex theory of the seduction which is spread on three narrowly interdependent and complementary registers: the temporal one, the topic and the traductif one.

The temporal register remained, it is the theory of the deferred action or the traumatism in two times. She postulates as what fits in the unconscious one is only what is in the relation between two events separated in the time and by one moment (as well like moment as like power struggle) of change allowing about reacting differently than to the first event.

At the first time is the fear, fright or great fear which confront the subject not-prepared with a highly significant sex act, but still unimportant, since the subject is in a state of unpreparedness or immaturity, i.e. an indecipherable sex act, an sex act whose significance cannot be comparable. Left on standby or put side, the memory is not in oneself pathological or traumatisant. It will become it only by its recollection, its reviviscence, at the time of a second event or scene which enters in associative resonance with the preceding event.

At the second time is a scene which points out the first. But, because of the new possibilities of reaction, it is the memory itself - and not the new scene functioning as release - which functions like a news " libidinale" energy sources; intern and car-traumatisante. In other words, it is the memory of the sexual assault which wounds rather than the sexual assault itself at the time where it occurred.

At this second car-traumatic time, the exit is not in a liquidation in the lapse of memory or a normal development of the subject towards an aggression to which it could not fight against, but in a " defense pathologique" or " refoulement".

In the normal development, to recognize its impotence, it is to recognize the monstrosity of the aggression and of the attacker who is often an adult to be respected and the recognition of this monstrosity is equivalent to disrespect, i.e. to transgress an order which is at the same time a requirement and a scheduling.

Not to create an external chaos in the transgression of the order, the subject creates an internal chaos in a strategy quasi-soldier of " defense pathologique" or " refoulement".

At the time of the first aggression, the subject could not be defended owing to lack of adequate means. With the second aggression, the subject has many means of defending oneself against the aggressive external power, but it is disarmed on the interior face to blame the torturer who holds the authority symbolic system and the imaginary capacity, with the “Nom of the Father” and under the “Law of the Father”.

The register topic is in the interior face of the " Law of Père" whose transgression leads to the external chaos and whose acceptance leads to chaos interns " defense pathologique" or " refoulement".

The traductif register is linguistic where repression is a defect of translation of unconscious to conscious and where this translation is also a passage through the barrier which separates two psychic moments. This traductif register compares the report/ratio of the two scenes between them to a re-registration and a translation (trans-ducere: to lead through) and repression to a defect partial or total of translation.

Freud attaches such an importance to the seduction in the genesis of the repression which he seeks systematically to find of the " scènes" of seduction as well passivates in the Obsessional neurosis as in the Hystérie where he initially discovered them. The seduction known as passive does not mean that the subject has a passive behavior in this scene, but indicates the correlative state of unpreparedness for the state of passivity. This passivity is also referred on the initiative catch or not by one of the parts. However, we know all which an initiative can have place only at one favourable time and in an adequate context.

Freud opposes the etiology of the Obsessional neurosis where the aggression comprises a nuance of participation in the pleasure of the sex act in the etiology of hysteria where seduction and passivity would be obvious from the start. But, this symmetrical opposition is prone to guarantee without fine graduations of the activity to the passivity and without adequate distributions in the sequence of the acts and the scenes. Finally, the theory of seduction " restreinte" or " restrictive" is that of before 1897 which has great forces and great weaknesses.

These forces are in the close relationships between the theory and the data drawn from the analytical experiment, in the registers temporal, topic and traductif and in the explanatory capacity on a large range of the field of psychopathology.

These weaknesses are in the restriction of the seduction on " scènes" where the interaction of the participating active parts is reduced to the couple activity-passivity and in the restriction of perversity on adults where there should be necessarily more " pervers" with the generation of the parents that of " névrosés" with the generation of the children. Lastly, the greatest weakness is undoubtedly the increase of scene in scene to the original scene which would deliver the revealing key.

A theory of seduction " généralisée" “a posteriori” or deferred action (of the period 1964-1967) is the ambition to extend the seduction and perversion to cure the weaknesses and to reinforce the forces of the deferred action and traductif, of linguistic with linguistics and semiotics.

The seduction would not be any more one couple action-reaction, but a mode of interaction where there would be no more tempting person and of anybody allured, but of the people who take part in at the same time infantile and parental seduction in the relation parent-child. Perversion would be mistakes in interpretation or versions parallel. Topics would not be energy any more impulses of internal, but semiotic attack of the direction, as an orientation, relevance and significance.

The temporality of the deferred action would keep its fruitfulness, but the major figure of the infantile seduction would move of the father to the mother through the maternage of the care and the food.

Freud was gradually led to question the veracity of the scenes of seduction and to give up this theory of seduction by discovering that these scenes of seduction are sometimes fantasmatic rebuildings and this discovery is correlative progressive update of the infantile Sexualité. The deferred action is simply a work of archeologist who tells the life of a population starting from the fragments of pottery or of the sporting commentator who tells a match of hockey starting from the traces left on the ice by the blades of the shoes.

The abandonment of the theory of seduction (Neurotica)

The restriction of the theory of seduction on the Psychopathology, the dislocation and the dismemberment of the registers temporal, topic and traductif started this abandonment devoted by the repudiation of this theory by Freud itself which regarded it as pertaining to one completed period. Is this abandonment or scuttling a self-censorship? If it is it, of which censure does act it?

The data drawn from the analytical experiment were a continuation of incestes, rapes and brutal sexual assaults in the very respected shade of the middle-class families of Vienna to the turning of this century. Accounts of these " scènes" would make redden of decency and fade of jealousy the pornographes more aguerris.

During its stay with Paris and while following the courses of Jean-Martin Charcot on the Hysteria, from October 3rd, 1885 to February 28th, 1886, Freud followed the conferences and attended the autopsies of Brouardel with the mortuary of Paris on cases of rape and assassination of child or sexual violence accompanied by physical violence (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, 1984, pp. 35-72, " Retracted reality. Renouncement of Freud of the theory of the séduction" , Sapwood, Paris.).

The stay of Freud to Paris was perhaps of greatter historical importance in the genesis of the Psychanalyse than itself thought it or did not want to admit. It was there a first hand witness of the real sexual traumatisms tested at the time of childhood, which are as much of " preuves" on which it built its thesis of 1896 (then abandoned) where tested real sexual traumatisms are in the middle same nevrotic disease.

This abandonment expresses this sentence curious drawn from the foreword about Freud to the book from the captain John Gregory Bourke " Scatologic Rites off All Nations": (in connection with Brouardel)

• " It was accustomed to showing us by the material post-mortem which was with the mortuary, how much things deserved to be known by the doctors, but that science preferred ignorer" (COp cit. 1984, p. 52).

At that time, a " attack with the pudeur" was a rape without penetration whose victims were poor children, especially little girls, three reasons necessary and sufficient to be unaware of (in the English significance not to want to know), and the medico-legal literature was filled by it, as " attests it; The medico-legal study on the MALTREATMENT AND ILL TREATMENTS EXERTED ON OF ENFANTS" of Ambroise Tardieu.

It was about ill-treatment generally exerted on people the most stripped (poor women and children) by people in position of authority (father, mother, schoolmaster or owner). Generally, it is like this:

• " excellent and perfect an honest man, father, precisely honoured and absolutely incompetent with a defamatory action, had let themselves take in a trap of this kind. This man had been shown to have tried to rape a little girl. The child and his family were poor, of very modest condition and for this reason even, covetous with the eyes of Fournier" (COp cit. 1984, p. 62).

While following the conferences and the autopsies of Brouardel on the body of children, deaths, victims of maltreatment, often of the hands of a relative, Freud could have seen and know of the things that science preferred to be unaware of and could have had perhaps the feeling to touch the untouchable one and to name the unnamable one.

The stay of Freud to Paris (1885-1886) perhaps inspired to him the development of the theory of seduction, but it contributed also partly to its abandonment for, says one today, to avoid the scandal which it would cause. Freud hesitated, in its definition of the sexual abuse between an excess of sexual activities and a sexual assault, impressed by what he had seen during the demonstrations of Brouardel to the mortuary of Paris.

Like excess of sexual activities, Freud included in the sexual abuse any deviated sexuality of its procreative function, like the masturbation, the coitus interruptus of the withdrawal before ejaculation and the sexual relation with condom or condom. Like sexual assault, Freud included in the sexual abuse any sexual violence accompanied by physical violence or morals of a physical or moral constraint on a person with a fortuitous or indésiré sexual relation of the Pédophilie, Viol and Inceste.

The communality in these three cases of figure is the torturer-victim ratio by the constraint physical or moral and the difference is in the age and the proximity or familiarity in the structures of relationship. Of return to Vienna, between 1894 and 1900, Freud found in Wilhelm Fliess a close friend, a confidant, a collaborator and a contradictor. Freud knew and admired Fliess since 1887.

Mistakes and errors of the friend Wilhelm Fliess

Wilhelm Fliess shared the ideas of Freud on the importance of sexuality (masturbation, coitus interruptus and use of the condoms) in the etiology of what one called the " neuroses actuelles" , i.e. manifest and acting, like the Depression and of the symptoms of anguish. The two men were persuaded that the sexual problems, particularly the masturbation, played a role-key in the release of the nevrotic diseases. They were also persuaded of displacements which intervened in these physical diseases, displacements towards the nose at Fliess (doctor otolaryngologist) and psychological displacements at Freud, i.e. the substitution of something of inoffensive with the real and painful problem, to channel the anguish by obliterating the way towards its effective source.

The interest of Fliess was limited to the physical symptoms and a physical etiology, while that of Freud directed towards the obessionnelles neuroses in the psychological symptoms and a psychological etiology. At that time, the " névrose" was a concept which was especially to delimit an organic psychic disease of a disease " psychogénlétique". The case of Emma Eckstein is for this reason significant: she suffered from Hystérie and its disorders could not thus be attached to a somatic cause. Fliess, as doctor otolaryngologist, directly connected to him sexuality with the nose and wrote:

• " The women who masturbate generally suffer from dysmenorrhoea. They can be cured only by one operation on the nose, if they give up this bad habitude" (COp cit. 1984, p. 75).

Freud was pulled about between this scandalous hysteria honnie of its corporation, between its desire for finding a cause organic with the neurosis and its friendship with Fliess. The approach of the latter allowed, thought Freud, to establish the link between somatic and psychological it is only after the operation of Emma Eckstein, one of its first analyzed that it carried it out. The operation was not a success and this woman carried after-effects until her death in 1924. For symptoms of irregular and painful menstruations and because she said to masturbate sometimes, Emma Eckstein was disfigured and suffered from atrocious pains following an operation practiced by Fliess, surgical operation that Freud have pein with reconnaiîte as missed and inappropriate (cf on this subject its dream of the made Irma injection. Emma Ekstein in spite of became very Psychanalyste it even.

Freud allotted to hysteria the strong reactions of this woman against this operation. The history of the theory of seduction worked out by Freud, his relationship with the operation of Emma Eckstein and the abandonment of this theory by Freud are closely related to the history of the relation between Fliess and Freud.

After its stay in Paris (1885-1886) and of return to Vienna, Freud met in 1887 Fliess which exerted on Freud a great emotional influence, intellectual and scientist during the years which followed. For the otolaryngologist, the sexual problems are about the nose and it was due to it so much until presenting a medical article on the " neurosis reflex nasale" with the 12th Congress of Internal medicine in Wiesbaden in June 1893.

Freud, in the correspondence which followed, him retorqua that one cannot neglect the sexual etiology. Fliess followed the opinion of Freud and admits the sexual abuse which remained mainly the masturbation. Emma Eckstein made the expenses of them.

Gradually, the preponderance at Freud of the psychological factor (at the same time in the etiology and the therapy) was to exclude a close cooperation with Fliess. Freud embarked in a new type of research and finds a great number of sexual assaults there. What made rock its definition of the sexual abuse of an excess of sexuality to a sexual assault.

Freud was on the track of something of much more important, the " séductions" infantile, and discovered that Katharina, the girl of the landlord, was victim with thirteen or fourteen years of a sexual attack of his/her father. The hidden side of the history of Emma Eckstein was a sudden sexual assault at 13 years in a shop. The analysis revealed another memory of sexual assault which has occurred earlier towards the 8 years age. Freud concludes with a memory causing an affect that the incident in itself had not caused. Meanwhile, the changes caused by puberty made possible a new comprehension of the facts reminded. It pointed out that a driven back memory was transformed into traumatism only deferred action. Freud made use of the case of Emma Eckstein to explain repression.

The theoretical position of Freud was that the hysterical symptoms of the latency period after 8 years or at the time of adolescence almost invariably represent the effects of a sexual assault undergone earlier in early childhood.

Freud undergoing itself the effect of deferred action of its Parisian stay to the mortuary of Paris with Brouardel. Freud was convinced that the memories of Emma Eckstein were real and referred to something which actually occurred and was concerned with first real events as well as traumatisms and their effects on the later emotional life of the victim. The new theory was publicly exposed for the first time on March 30th, 1896 by an article entitled " The Heredity and etiology of the névroses" in the " Neurologique" review; , periodic French, in homage to Charcot and its disciples. The words " psychanalyse" and " psychonévrose" there are mentioned for the first time.

Freud presented, in German, a new article even percussion " Bemerkungen über die Abwehrneuropsychosen" or " New remarks on the psychoses of défense" It notes that the girls are more often victims of sexual assaults. But, for this period, Fliess took very an other direction and this divergence is important in the renouncement of Freud of its theory of seduction.

Freud acquired the certainty that the author of the sexual attacks on young children (primarily of the little girls) and that to in no case had “to be shown” the “father was the father” (letter published with Fliess of September 21st, 1897 with the italics of Freud itself). The italics show the need for blaming the victim to clear the torturer. For that, it would be necessary to move the memories towards the phantasms and to speak about seduction where it is the victim which causes the sexual attacks of the torturer. Generally, this victim was a woman or a little girl and the torturer was her father.

The game raised by Freud was too large or the innovative idea was too new to have the adhesion of Wilhem Fliess and Joseph Breuer, two men very important for Freud, its friend and his Master.

Moreover the scandal of the " stories sales" was too large to incite to give up. The sexual assaults described by Freud in the texts of 1896 became " phantasms of enfants" or " lies of women hystériques" and brutal attacks of the " excess of tenderness parentale". The abandonment of the theory of seduction could be illustrated by a change of currency, currency " What they made you, poor enfant" with that of " In here enough with the stories sales".

Sándor Ferenczi (1873-1933) was the friend and the disciple nearest to Freud. Contrary to Freud, Ferenczi was obstinated to rather make confidence with the exactitude of the stories of sexual attack which has occurred in childhood than to reject them like phantasms of the children or of lies of the hysterical women.

What cost him the friendship of Freud and ostracism on behalf of the important analysts of the time until the end of its days. Ferenczi explains why the desire of tenderness and affection of the child answers the need that the adult for a sexual gratification at all costs. What results in a double language of tenderness and passion in confusion between the child and the adults.

In other words, a request for affection and tenderness in the child, the adult answers by the sexuality of the genital activities. Then, the aggression lies in the misunderstanding of an answer unexpected and indésirée compared to the request. The aggression is also in the physical and moral constraint.

As an attack and a power struggle, the seduction is a form of hatred rather than of love. This seduction is generally accompanied by violence in the rape and gives to the child the idea of a bond between sexuality and violence, thus causing in the child of the disastrous effects of shame and culpability and in its capacity to like later like in its sexuality in perverted forms.

Finally, for the forsaken theory of seduction, Freud substituted the Oedipus complex in whom the " séduction" real attack moved towards a phantasm of inceste, this time mother-wire rather than father-girl. Thus, Freud moved away from the brutal social reality of which he was a witness privileged with the mortuary of Paris, while following the conferences and the autopsies of Brouardel and by reading the writings of Baker, of Tardieu and the medico-legal literature.

Conclusion

While renonçant with its theory of seduction, Freud gave up showing the father (as he wrote in Fliess in the letter of September 21st, 1897 with the italics of Freud itself). Then, it was necessary to blame the victim and to make carry the odious one to the women and the children due to provocation to the sexual attacks.

Removed from the influence of sexuality freudienne, the theory of seduction revives in the traumatism at two times principiel of the Trouble of post-traumatic stress with the syndrome psychotraumatic and the affect of André Green of the Border line of the state-limits.

Reference

Random links:

Taulmaril | Chronological plank of the authors | The Community of communes of Banks of the Sarthe | Mrs Claude | Daimiel