Mental health articles

Freud’s unresolved issues of his seduction theoryFreud’s renunciation of his seduction theory was forwarded by
Westerlund (1986). After analyzing Freud’s letters and other historical writings, she
suggested that Freud, after recognizing the existence of certain hysterical features in
his brother and several sisters, was on the verge of discovering that his father might
have sexually abused one or more of them. In the same letter to Fliess in which he father was responsible for neurosis. There is some question whether Freud’s “shocking”
behavior towards his niece was also perhaps erotic in nature (p, 302). Westerlund cites
Jones, Freud’s biographer, as stating that it is likely that the cruel behavior with which
Freud and his nephew treated his niece had some likely erotic component.
These three experiences, while equivocal, lend weight to Westerlund’s (1986)
argument that by endorsing a theory in which hysterical symptoms resulted from
sexual abuse experiences, Freud may have come dangerously close to acknowledging
a side of himself and his father with which he was most uncomfortable. Freud may
have had significant personal issues with his original theory because of his own
father’s possible perpetration, his brother’s and sisters’ neurotic symptomatology, or
his own possible erotic feelings. Westerlund hypothesizes that only by creating the
Oedipus complex was Freud able to resolve the very personal nature of his original
seduction theory.
recanted his theory, Freud stated, “In all cases, the father, not excluding my own,
had to be accused of being perverse” (Freud, as cited in Masson, 1985, p. 264).
How can this statement be interpreted? Westerlund (1986) interprets it to mean
that Freud’s father may have been guilty of incest. The context within which this
letter was written, however, must be considered. Freud had recently presented a
theory in which most or all hysteria was reported to result from a childhood history
of sexual abuse. It is especially obvious today that current symptomatology is not
always the result of child sexual abuse. Perhaps because he had developed a theory
of hysteria based only upon a history of child sexual abuse, Freud found himself in
the awkward position of having to defend the position that all individuals with
hysterical features were previously sexually abused. As Armstrong (1996) puts it,
“Incest was the (sole) cause of female neurosis, thus female ‘neurotics’ must have
experienced incest’’ (p. 302). Unable to reconcile this apparent conflict, Freud may
instead have had impetus to abandon his theory (Rosenfeld, 1987).
It was also during this time that Freud experienced overly affectionate feelings
towards his daughter and reported a dream to Fliess in which these feelings occurred
(Westerlund, 1986). While Westerlund states that these were incestuous feelings, Freud
suggested that as they were in a dream, they were symbolic of his need to suggest that the