Concept
Seduction theory
Freud's hypothesis of the mid-1890s that hysteria and obsessional neurosis go back to sexual experiences imposed on the child by an adult, which become pathogenic only when a later event revives their memory after puberty. Freud gave it up in 1897 and turned to the part played by infantile fantasy and the child's own sexuality. Laplanche later took up the abandoned theory and generalised it.
Read more- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 2
- Related
- General theory of seduction
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1896 Freud set out the seduction theory in his papers of 1896 on the aetiology of hysteria and on the neuro-psychoses of defence, and told Fliess in September 1897 that he no longer believed in it.
reworked by
- Jean Laplanche 1987 Laplanche held that Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory in 1897 was a going-astray. He took the theory up again but detached it from actual abuse and from pathology, so that seduction by the adult's messages becomes the ordinary origin of every psyche.
gave rise to
- General theory of seduction 1987 The general theory grows out of Freud's seduction theory of the 1890s. Freud's version explained a particular pathology by actual sexual trauma; Laplanche's makes the adult's unconsciously compromised messages a universal condition of the child's development.