Mental health articles

Rejection of the Theory of Seduction
Freud’s colleagues, including Charcot, who “found it preposterous that parents
would molest their own children” (Joyce, 1995, p. 200), frankly rejected his theory, a
rejection that continued as long as Freud embraced his seduction theory (Masson,
1984). As Masson states, “In accepting the reality of seduction, in believing his
patients, Freud was at odds with the entire climate of German medical thinking”
(p. 137). It is perhaps not surprising then, that by 1897 Freud had repudiated his own
observations. In his now famous letter, he announced to Fliess, “I no longer believe
in my neurotica” (Freud, as cited in Masson, 1985, p. 264). Freud now believed that
most, but not all, of the assaults he reported had never occurred (Masson, 1984). He
instead suggested that the young child, needing to release sexual tensions, wished for
the sexual attention from her father. He believed that these tensions were universal
and unfolded in developmental stages.
Having replaced his theory having a universal external etiology with a theory
having a universal internal etiology (Masson, 1984), Freud then advanced his theory
of the Oedipus complex, which became a “universal and intrapsychic rather than
environmental hazard for emotional health” (Summit, 1989, pg. 414). According to
the Oedipus complex, the female child initially takes her mother as her love object.
When the child sees the male genitalia, however, she immediately recognizes it as
superior and consequently falls victim to penis envy. Her father now becomes her
new love object (Hall, 1954). It is during this stage, Freud hypothesized, that girls
create incestuous fantasies of themselves with their fathers. Freud therefore came to
believe that reported cases of incest were simply wishful fantasies for the love
object. As Hare-Mustin (1987) states, “patients are made ill by their fantasies, not by
what happens to them” (p. 19).