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The '[[primal scene]]' is a [[scene]] of [[sexual]] intercourse between the [[parents]] and observed (or fantasized) by a [[child]], who usually interprets it as an act of violent [[aggression]] on the part of the [[father]].
The [[memory]] of the [[primal scene]] feeds into most [[fantasies]], and especially those of [[neurosis|neurotics]], the classic [[case]] [[history]] [[being]] that of [[Freud]]'s '[[Wolf Man]]' [[patient]].<ref>1918</ref>
The scene leads to the sexual arousal of the child, but at the same tim induces [[castration]] [[anxiety]] and thus lays the foundation for the [[Oedipus complex]].
According to [[Klein]], the child fantasizes that its parents are locked together in permanent intercourse; they merge to [[form]] the combined parent [[figure]], and torment and destroy one [[another]] in the act of copulation.
The combined parent figure is one of the most terrifying fantasies of [[childhood]].
Whether or not the [[primal scene]] is an actual [[memory]] or a [[real]] [[event]] or a [[fantasy]] elaborated on the basis of fragmentary observations and suppositions is a question that is not really resolved by [[Freud]].
The expression "[[primal]] scene" refers to the [[sight]] of [[sexual relations]] between the parents, as observed, constructed, and/or fantasized by the child and [[interpreted]] by the child as a scene of [[violence]]. The scene is not [[understood]] by the child, remaining enigmatic but at same [[time]] provoking [[sexual excitement]].
The term appeared for the [[first time]] in Freud's [[work]] apropos of the "Wolf Man" case (1918b [1914]), but the [[notion]] of a sexual memory experienced too early to have been translated into [[verbal]] [[images]], and thus liable to [[return]] in the form of conversion [[symptoms]] or obsessions, was part of his [[thinking]] as early as 1896, as [[witness]] his [[letter]] of May 30 of that year to Wilhelm [[Fliess]], where he evokes a "[[surplus]] of [[sexuality]]" that "impedes [[translation]]" (1950a, pp. 229-230). Here we are already close to the [[model]] of the [[trauma]] and its "deferred" effect. The following year, in his letter to Fliess of May 2, Freud gave the approximate age when in his estimation [[children]] were liable to "hear things" that they would [[understand]] only "subsequently" as six or seven months (SE 1, p. 247). The [[subject]] of the child's witnessing parental coitus came up as well, albeit in an older child, with the case of "Katharina," in the [[Studies on Hysteria]] (1895d), and Freud evoked it yet again in The [[Interpretation]] of [[Dreams]], with the fantasy of the young man who dreamed of watching his parents copulating during his [[life]] in the womb (1900a [addition of 1909], pp. 399-400).
Freud persistently strove to decide whether the primal scene was a fantasy or something actually witnessed; above all, he placed increasing emphasis on the child's own fantasy interpretation of the scene as violence visited upon the [[mother]] by the father. He went so far, in "On the Sexual Theories of Children" (1908c, p. 221), as to find a measure of justification for this interpretation, suggesting that, though the child may exaggerate, the [[perception]] of a real repugnance towards sexual intercourse on the part of a mother fearful of another pregnancy may be quite accurate. In the case of "Little [[Hans]]," however, the violence was explained in [[terms]] of a [[prohibition]]: Hans deemed it analogous to "smashing a window-pane or forcing a way into an enclosed [[space]]" (1909b, p. 41).
The fantasy of the primal scene, like the sexual theories of children, is typical in [[character]]: it may be encountered in all neurotics, if not in every [[human]] being (Freud, 1915f), and it belongs in the [[category]] of "primal" fantasies. It appears, however, not to have the same force for all individuals. The case history of the Wolf Man gave Freud the opportunity not only to pursue the issue of the [[reality]] of the primal scene, but also to propose the [[idea]] that it lay at the root of childhood (and later [[adult]]) [[neurosis]]: the sexual [[development]] of the child was "positively splintered up by it" (1918b [1914), pp. 43-44). Freud later would later assign a central [[place]] to the primal scene in his [[analysis]] of [[Marie Bonaparte]], although in her case the scene took place between her nanny and a groom (Bonaparte, 1950-53).
Looked upon as an actual event rather than as a pure fantasy reconstructed in a retrospective way (as with [[Jung]]'s zurückphantasieren), the primal scene had a much more marked [[traumatic]] impact, and this led Freud to insist on the "reality" of such scenes, thus returning to the debate over event-driven (or "historical") reality versus [[psychic]] reality. Beyond the issue of the scene itself, however, it was the [[whole]] subject of fantasy that was thus raised (in Chapter 5 of the Wolf Man case-history [1918b, pp. 48-60]), discussed in terms that would be picked up by Freud again later in "Constructions in Analysis" (1937d).
It was not merely, in Freud's view, that the [[technique]] of [[psychoanalysis]] demanded that fantasies be treated as realities so as to give their evocation all the force it needed, but also that many "real" scenes were not accessible by way of [[recollection]], but solely by way of dreams. Whether a scene was constructed out of elements observed elsewhere and in a different context (for example, [[animal]] coitus transposed to the parents); reconstituted on the basis of clues (such as bloodstained sheets); or indeed observed directly, but at an age when the child still had not the corresponding verbal images at its disposal; did not fundamentally alter the basic facts of the matter: "I intend on this occasion," wrote Freud, "to close the [[discussion]] of the reality of the primal scene with a non liquet" (1918b, p. 60).
[[Melanie Klein]]'s view of the primal scene differed from Freud's, for where Freud saw an enigmatic perception of violence, she saw the child's projective fantasies. Klein describes the primal scene in a way closely resembling Freud's definition of the sexual theories of childhood. These wishes of the [[infant]] abound in hostile and destructive tendencies, but the mother is pictured therein as just as dangerous for the father as the father is for her. The sexual [[relationship]] between the parents, fantasized as continuous, is also the basis of the "combined-parent figure."
The primal scene is inseparable from the sexual theories of childhood that it serves to create. This disturbing [[representation]], which at once acknowledges and denies the familiar quality of the parents, excludes the child even as it concerns [[them]], as witness the [[libidinal]] excitement the child feels in response. The [[particularity]] of the primal scene lies in the fact that the subject experiences in a simultaneous and contradictory way the emergence of the unknown within a familiar [[world]], to which they are bound by vital [[needs]], by expectations of [[pleasure]], and by the [[self]]-[[image]] that it reflects back to them. The [[lack]] of common measure between the child's emotional and [[psychosexual]] [[experience]] and the [[words]] that could give an account of the primal scene creates a gulf that the sexual theories of childhood attempt to bridge. A [[sadistic]] [[reading]] of the scene combines the child's curiosity [[about]] both the origin and the end of life in a representation in which [[death]] and life are indeed fused.
==See Also==
* [[Action-(re)presentation]]
* [[Archaic mother]]
* [[Combined parent figure]]
* [[Construction]]/[[reconstruction]]
* [[Dead mother complex]]
* [[Deferred action]]
* [[Dream symbolism]]
* [[Family romance]]
* [[From the History of an Infantile Neurosis]]
* [[Hysteria]]
* [[Identification]]
* [[Infantile neurosis]]
* [[Infantile sexual curiosity]]
* [[Invariant]]
* [[Listening]]
* [[The Mass Psychology of Fascism]]
* [[Oedipus complex]]
* [[Early Oedipus complex]]
* [[On the Sexual Theories of Children]]
* [[Ontogenesis]]
* [[Perversion]]
* [[Pleasure in thinking]]
* [[Pregnancy]]
* [[Primal fantasies]]
* [[Primitive]]
* [[Sadism]]
* [[Sexual theories of children]]
* [[Superego]]
* [[Vagina dentata]]
* [[Word-presentation]]
==References==
<references/>
# Bonaparte, Marie. (1950-53). Five copy-books. Translated by Nancy Procter-Gregg. [[London]]: [[Imago]].
# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1900a). The [[interpretation of dreams]]. Part I, SE, 4: 1-338]]
* [[Part II, SE, 5: 339-625.
# ——. (1908c). On the sexual theories of children. SE, 9: 205-226.
# ——. (1909b). Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy. SE, 10: 1-149.
# ——. (1915f). A case of paranoia running counter to the psycho-analytic theory of the disease. SE, 14: 261-272.
# ——. (1918b [1914]). From the history of an infantile neurosis. SE, 17: 1-122.
# ——. (1937d). Constructions in analysis. SE, 23: 255-269.
# ——. (1950a [1887-1902]). Extracts from the Fliess papers. SE, 1: 173-280.
# Freud, Sigmund, and Breuer, Josef. (1895d). Studies on hysteria. SE, 2: 48-106.
# Klein, Melanie. (1961). Narrative of a child analysis. The conduct of the psychoanalysis of children as seen in the treatment of a ten-year-old boy. New York: Basic Books.
# Laplanche, Jean. (1989). New foundations for psychoanalysis (David Macey, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell.
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