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Sigmund [[Freud ]] developed the [[theory ]] of [[seduction ]] in the years 1895-1897, and then he abandoned it. The theory accounted for the genesis of the psychopathological [[unconscious ]] on the basis of a [[complex ]] [[mechanism ]] that brought two moments into play: a [[scene ]] in which a [[child ]] is seduced by an [[adult]], and the "deferred" reactivation of this scene at a later [[time]].

[[Jean Laplanche ]] has proposed a "general theory of seduction," extending the [[Freudian ]] [[seduction theory ]] to the genesis of the unconscious in general, and broadening its foundations to include primacy of the [[other]]'s enigmatic [[message ]] and the theory of [[repression ]] as a [[partial ]] failure to translate this message.

It has been said, and is incessantly repeated, that Freud abandoned his first theory of the [[neuroses ]] and announced this to Wilhelm [[Fliess ]] in his [[letter ]] dated September 21, 1897 (SE 1, p. 259). Recrudescences and relics of this theory are nonetheless legion in Freud's [[work]]. What is perhaps the most surprising fact is that it was effectively tabooed and misrepresented until 1964 (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1964). Even then, when it began to attract a new interest, this was directed not to the highly complex mechanism described by Freud but instead to anecdotes of [[manifest ]] [[sexual ]] abuses and to the issue of whether Freud had fled, or "[[repressed]]," this [[reality ]] and taken refuge in the hypothesis of a pure and simple production of [[fantasies ]] (Masson, 1984).

Freud's original seduction theory was strictly confined to the realm of the psychoneuroses. It is even tempting to [[think ]] that Freud posited the [[existence ]] of the unconscious in neurotics alone, and that he nourished the hope that [[cure ]] might come to mean the elimination of the unconscious.

The theory sought to explain the [[development ]] of the unconscious by the repression, in the child, of [[memories ]] of sexual scenes usually experienced while in the charge of an adult. It brought [[three ]] interconnected levels into play: a [[temporal ]] [[dimension]], a [[topographical ]] dimension, and a [[language]]-related dimension. The temporal aspect of seduction was bound up with the [[concept ]] of deferred [[action ]] (or "afterwardness" [Nachträglichkeit]), which was to survive in Freud's later [[thought]]. The [[thesis ]] was that [[nothing ]] was inscribed in the [[human ]] unconscious save by way of the interrelationship between at least two events separated from one [[another ]] by a period of mutation, a lapse of time that made it possible for the [[subject ]] to react differently to the [[memory ]] of the first [[experience ]] than to the actual experience as lived. [[Left ]] in suspense, the initial memory became pathogenic and traumatizing when revived by the occurrence of a second scene having some [[association ]] or resonance with the first.

The topographical aspect involved the theory of an ego in the [[process ]] of [[formation]], armored against attack from without but not against attack from within. Since what attacked it at the second [[moment ]] was not an [[outside ]] [[event ]] but a memory, this ego was unprotected and could react only by repression.

Lastly, a [[linguistic ]] aspect of the theory was suggested by Freud's analogy between the [[barrier ]] separating the two moments of the [[psychical ]] [[trauma ]] and a [[translation]], or a partial failure of translation (letter to Fliess of December 6, 1896, SE 1, p. 235).

It is thus [[apparent ]] just how inadequate a response it is to reduce the seduction theory to the simplistic assertion that the adult's seduction of the child brings on [[mental ]] [[disturbance]]. Freud's first theory was in fact intimately interwoven with the [[clinical ]] [[doctrine ]] of the time.

At the close of 1897, Freud undertook a systematic critique of his theory which led him to abandon it, surrendering [[hysterics ]] to their "seduction fantasies," and those fantasies themselves, ultimately, to a phylogenetic [[determinism]].

The critique of a theory—its "falsification"—may have several outcomes: [[rejection]], partial modification, or a reexamination of its foundations. It is the last of these that Jean Laplanche has sought with his "general theory of seduction." In the first [[place]], he argues, the unconscious should not be looked upon as invariably pathological. The unconscious is part of the [[human condition]], and there is therefore no [[reason ]] to rebuke a theory or a [[practice ]] for not [[being ]] able to eliminate it. Secondly, the adult-child [[relationship ]] ought to be viewed in a way that transcends psychopathological features specific to [[particular ]] cases of [[perverse ]] sexual abuse. Generally [[speaking]], there is a basic asymmetry between the [[infant ]] and the adult, stemming from the fact that [[adults ]] have already constructed a sexual unconscious for themselves and that their way of addressing themselves to [[children]], in gestures or [[words]], is necessarily shot through by that unconscious. Thirdly, the general theory of seduction aims to bring considerations to the fore that played little part in Freud's [[thinking]]. These include: the [[notion ]] of the message; the priority of the adult other in the message received by the infant; and, lastly, the [[idea ]] of "translation" as the basis for a [[model ]] of repression less mechanistic than that of a pure interplay of forces, as set forth in classical [[psychoanalytic ]] thought.

See also: [[Anaclisis]]/anaclictic; [[Breastfeeding]]; [[Deferred action ]] and trauma; [[Heterosexuality]]; [[Masochism]]; [[Maternal ]] reverie, capacity for; [[Object]]; Ontogenesis; [[Oral ]] [[stage]]; Proton-pseudos; Seduction; Seduction Scenes.[[Bibliography]]