Mental health articles

THE EARLY PERIOD: FREUD’S THEORY OF SEDUCTION
It was into this sociocultural environment that Freud moved. In 1885, while finishing
his medical studies, he made a several-month study trip to Paris where he worked
under Charcot (Masson, 1984), whom he admired. Masson, an expert on Freud,
shows that during Freud’s stay in Paris, he was not only exposed through Charcot’s
and Tardieu’s writings to the reality and frequency of child sexual abuse, but also
probably witnessed autopsies on some of its young victims. Freud also had in his
possession the major French books on sexual violence against children and was
familiar with the writings of Fournier, Bourdin, and Brouardel.
From Paris, Freud returned to Vienna, where he established his medical
practice specializing in nervous disorders (Masson, 1984). Here he introduced a type
of therapy that relied on the patient talking while the physician listened. This free
association method of treatment allowed his patients to explore hidden emotions in
an atmosphere free of judgment and censure (Rush, 1996) and opened for him a
view into underlying issues of psychopathology. The most important turning point in
Freud’s career was when he began to understand the force called the unconscious, and he explored this realm not only in his patients, but also through his own selfanalysis.
This discovery set the stage for his work on child sexual abuse.
By 1896, Freud had formalized his theory on the etiology of hysteria, which he
presented to his colleagues in a group of three papers entitled, “The Aetiology of
Hysteria” (Rush, 1996). In these papers he presented a sample of 18 patients, labeled
hysterical, who he concluded had been victims of childhood sexual assault by
various caregivers (Joyce, 1995). In these three papers he further suggested that the
abuse itself was responsible for the victims’ significant psychopathology (neuroses).
These papers, however, offered contradictory information concerning the identify of
the perpetrators. He variously implicated teachers and female caretakers (but not
mothers), and same-age, opposite-sex children such as brothers (Rush, 1996). Only
later, in his private letters to Wilhelm Fliess, his good friend, did he suggest that
fathers were most often the offenders.