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Freud's initial thesis (1896) was the so-called [[seduction theory]] which held that hysteria and other neuroses originate in an experience of actual sexual abuse that has been repressed, but which can be recovered. Freud initially used hypnosis to recover these memories, but abandoned it in favor of what Anna O. so felicitously termed the [[talking cure]]. Freud subsequently revised his original seduction theory in the course of a long correspondence with his collaborator Fliess and argued that hysteria stemmed from unconscious fantasies about incest that were bound up with [[oedipus complex]], though he never denied either the existence or the pathogenic effects of real abuse.