Although some of his theories are still hotly debated, Sigmund Freud, (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939) is widely regarded as a trailblazer in the realm of psychiatry and psychology. The Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, who was allegedly the first to offer a comprehensive explanation of how human behavior is determined by the conscious and unconscious forces, is regarded as the founder of psychoanalysis.
Along with the “talk therapy” that remains the staple of psychiatric treatment to this day, Freud popularized, among other notions, such concepts as the psychosexual stages of development; Oedipus complex; transference; dream symbolism; Ego, Id and Super-Ego; and the one that has become part of the colloquial English more than any other psychiatric term – the Freudian slip.
Allen Esterson was Lecturer in mathematics and physics at Southwark College, London, until his retirement in 1994. He is the author of Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud(1993), and has published articles on Freud in History of the Human Sciences, History of Psychiatry,History of Psychology, and The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice. He is also the author of two major entries in The Freud Encyclopedia: Theory, Therapy, and Culture (2002) and of the Freud entry in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief (2007).
Q: You’ve written a fair amount on Freud’s seduction theory. Can you briefly describe what it is?
A: Well, there are actually two versions. One is the traditional version, based on Freud’s later accounts of an episode from his early psychoanalytic career. It says that as a result of numerous reports from his female patients that they had been sexually abused by their father in childhood, Freud postulated that hysterical symptoms in adulthood were caused by childhood sexual abuse. However, the original 1896 seduction theory papers show that Freud postulated that the precondition for hysteria was an unconscious memory of sexual excitation in infancy. (As Peter Swales has pointed out, the theory should be more accurately described as the "sexual molestation theory.") In addition, Freud also postulated that for cases of obsessional neurosis, as well as repressed memories of passive infantile sexual experiences, there would have to have been repressed memories of active sexual experiences around the age of eight (for example, the boy in question had supposedly sexually molested a younger sister)..
