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The "[[theory]] of seduction" was a metapsychological [[model]] worked out by Sigmund [[Freud]] between 1895 and 1897 and then abandoned; it assigned an etiological [[role]] in the production of psychoneuroses to memories of actual seduction attempts. In 1893, bolstered by the accounts given him by his [[patients]], Freud spoke of seduction as a [[clinical]] discovery. During the period 1895-1897, based on these clinical observations, he worked out a theory designed to explain the [[repression]] of [[infantile]] [[sexuality]]. On September 21, 1897, in a well-known [[letter]] to Wilhelm [[Fliess]], he laid out his reasons for abandoning this model (1950a, pp. 259-260). This [[whole]] episode is eminently instructive from an [[epistemological]] as from a heuristic point of view, and is worth reviewing. On May 30, 1893, Freud wrote to Fliess: "I believe I [[understand]] the [[anxiety]] [[neuroses]] of young [[people]] who must be regarded as virgins with no [[history]] of [[sexual]] abuse" (1950c, p. 73). This was his first allusion to the role of sexual seduction, still very broad in its application. In "Draft H," dated January 24, 1895, he presented the following [[narrative]]: "He had called her up to the bed, and, when she unsuspectingly obeyed, put his [[penis]] in her hand. There had been no sequel to the scene, and soon afterwards the stranger had gone off. In the course of the next few years the sister who had had this [[experience]] fell ill. . . . I endeavored to [[cure]] her tendency to [[paranoia]] by trying to reinstate the [[memory]] of the scene. I failed in this. . . . She wished not to reminded of it and consequently intentionally [[repressed]] it. . . . She had probably really been excited by what she had seen and by its memory.... The judgment [[about]] her had been transposed outwards: people were saying what otherwise she would have said to herself" (1950a, pp. 207-209). Here then we have seduction, repression, and the foreshadowing of [[rejection]], or what would much later be called [[foreclosure]]. On October 15, 1895, Freud wrote enthusiastically to Fliess: "Have I revealed the great clinical [[secret]] to you, either in [[writing]] or by [[word]] of mouth? Hysteria is the consequence of a presexual sexual shock. [[Obsessional]] [[neurosis]] is the consequence of a presexual sexual [[pleasure]] later transformed into [[guilt]]. 'Presexual' means before [[puberty]], before the production of the sexual substance; the relevant events become effective only as memories" (1895c, p. 127). On May 30, 1896, he distinguished the periods of [[life]] in which the [[event]] occurred from those in which repression came into play (1950a, pp. 229-231); and on May 2, 1897, with reference to [[fantasies]] in hysteria, he elaborated: "all their [[material]] is, of course, genuine. They are protective [[structures]], sublimations of the facts, embellishments of [[them]], and at the same [[time]] serve for [[self]]-exoneration. Their precipitating origin is perhaps from [[masturbation]] fantasies" (p. 247). The references to "structures," "embellishments," and "fantasies" indicate clearly that Freud was becoming increasingly dubious. In "Draft L," an attachment to this last-cited letter, he went on: "The aim seems to be to arrive [back] at the [[primal]] scenes. In a few cases this is achieved directly, but in [[others]] only by a roundabout path, via phantasies. For phantasies are [[psychical]] façades constructed in [[order]] to bar the way to these memories. Phantasies at the same time serve the trend towards refining the memories, towards sublimating them" (p. 248). [[Truth]] to tell, the great revision was already under way. In the famous letter to Fliess of September 21, 1897, Freud wrote: "I will confide in you at once the great secret that has been slowly dawning on me in the last few months. I no longer believe in my neurotica. This is probably not intelligible without an explanation. . . . Then came surprise at the fact that in every [[case]] the [[father]], not excluding my own [a phrase long censored by successive editors of the Freud-Fliess papers], had to be blamed as a [[pervert]] . . . though such a widespread extent of perversity towards [[children]] is, after all, not very probable" (p. 259). Freud now realized that scenes of seduction could be the product of reconstructions in fantasy whose [[purpose]] was to conceal the child's autoerotic [[activity]]. This was a historic [[moment]] in the shaping of psychoanalysis, rich in lessons about Freud's creative functioning and typical of the tendency of his innovative [[thinking]] to be overtaken by its own [[development]], often changing course when faced by contrary evidence but always anchored in clinical experience. Freud's self-[[analysis]], undertaken in the preceding months, following the [[death]] of his father, certainly made it possible for him to carry through this radical break, to approach the discovery of the [[Oedipus]] [[complex]], and eventually to reject his seduction hypothesis as [[false]]. Much later, in 1924, he would write the following in a footnote to his "Further Remarks on the Neuro-[[Psychoses]] of [[Defence]]" (1896b): "At that time I was not yet able to distinguish between my patients' phantasies about their childhood years and their real recollections. As a result, I attributed to the aetiological factor of seduction a [[significance]] and [[universality]] which it did not possess. When this error had been overcome, it became possible to obtain an insight into the spontaneous manifestations of the sexuality of children which I described in my [[Three]] Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d)" (p. 168n). A [[return]] to clinical observation was thus mandatory, and Freud had no [[theoretical]] alternative in the end but to assign seduction to the [[category]] of those primal fantasies whose origin he ascribed to the [[prehistory]] of humanity. In the first [[Freudian]] clinical [[doctrine]], the child at [[birth]] was naïve, innocent, and when confronted by the sexuality of the other perceived it as [[external]], foreign, and strange: this was the context of the [[seduction theory]]; in Freud's second clinical doctrine, the child was acknowledged to be the "polymorphously [[perverse]]," inherent possessor of a [[primitive]] sexuality, destined to unfold in its interactions with its [[human]] surround. But while, historically [[speaking]], [[infantile sexuality]] thus replaced seduction (scene and theory), it never obliterated it completely, and both clinical views continued to be discernible within [[psychoanalytic]] [[treatment]], as Freud himself frequently pointed out from the Three Essays to the [[Outline]] of [[Psycho]]-Analysis (1940a [1938]). ==definition==Since ''l'[[objet petit a]]'' is the [[object ]] of [[psychoanalysis]], no wonder that we [[encounter ]] a [[parallax ]] gap in the very core of psychoanalytic experience. When [[Jean Laplanche]] elaborates the impasses of the Freudian topic of [[seduction]], he effectively reproduces the precise structure of a [[Kant]]ian [[antinomy]]. On the one hand, there is the brutal empirical realism of the parental seduction: the ultimate [[cause ]] of later [[trauma]]s and [[pathology|pathologies]] is that children effectively were seduced and molested by [[adults]]; on the other hand, there is the (in)famous reduction of the seduction scene to the [[patient]]'s [[fantasy]]. As Laplanche points out, the ultimate irony is that the dismissal of seduction as fantasy passes today for the "realistic" stance, while those who insist on the [[reality]] of seduction end up advocating all kind of molestations, up to satanic rites and extra-terrestrial harassments... Laplanche's solution is precisely the [[transcendental ]] one: while "seduction" cannot be reduced just to [[subject]]'s fantasy, while it does refer to a [[traumatic ]] encounter of the other's "enigmatic [[message]]," bearing [[witness ]] to the other's [[unconscious]], it also cannot be reduced to an event in the reality of the actual interaction between child and his/her adults. Seduction is rather a kind of transcendental [[structure]], the minimal a priori [[formal ]] constellation of the child confronted with the impenetrable [[acts ]] of the Other which bear witness to the Other's unconscious - and we are never dealing here with simple "facts," but always with facts located into the [[space ]] of indeterminacy between "too soon" and "too late": the child is originally [[helpless]], thrown into the [[world ]] when unable to take care of itself, i.e., his/her surviving skills develop too late; at the same time, the encounter of the sexualized [[Other]] always, by a [[structural ]] [[necessity]], comes "too soon," as an unexpected shock which cannot ever be properly [[symbolized]], translated into the [[universe ]] of [[meaning]].<ref>See Jean Laplanche, New Foundations for Psychoanalysis, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1989.</ref> The fact of seduction is thus that of the Kantian transcendental X, a structurally-necessary transcendental [[illusion]].<ref>[[The Parallax View]]</blockquote>  ==defSee Also==The "scene * [[Amnesia]]* [[Character neurosis]]* [[Childhood]]* [[Deferred action]]* [[Fantasy]]* [[General theory of seduction]]* [[" connotes attempts at seductionHeredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses]]* [[Memories]]* [[Mnemic symbol]]* [[Primal fantasies]]* [[Hysteria]]* [[Introjection]]* [[Libido]]* [[Narcissism]]* [[Neurotica]]* [[Seduction scenes]]* [[Trauma]] ==References==<references/># [[Freud, real or fantasiedSigmund]]. (1896b). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence. SE, in 3: 157-185.# ——. (1905d). Three essays on the form theory of advancessexuality. SE, incitations7: 123-243.# ——. (1925d [1924]). An autobiographical study. SE, manipulations, or suggestions that are actively initiated by an adult vis20: 1-à74.# —— (1940a [1938]). An outline of psycho-vis a child who is passiveanalysis. SE, even frightened23: 139-207.The "theory of seduction" was a metapsychological model worked out by Sigmund Freud between 1895 and 1897 and then abandoned; it assigned an etiological role in # ——. (1950a [1887-1902]). Extracts from the production of psychoneuroses to memories of actual seduction attemptsFliess papers. In 1893SE, bolstered by the accounts given him by his patients, Freud1: 173-280.# ——. (1950c [1895]).[[Project]] for a [[scientific]] [[psychology]].SE, 1: 281-387. [[Category:New]]

[[Category:Sexuality]] ==References==<references/></ref>