Freud's Concept of Passivity, Russell H. Davis.  International Universities Press, 1991,  217 pages.

One hundred years and innumerable books and articles after the birth of psychoanalysis, it sometimes seems there is nothing left under the sun to say, at least about Freud. Then a volume appears that demonstrates that this is not so.

Freud's Concept of Passivity by Russell Davis is first of all a history of a concept. No one who has tried to track a Freudian idea through successive papers, contradictory meanings, elliptical references, and baroque sentence structure will fail to appreciate the dimensions of such a task. But as the author states, his purpose is not just historical but analytical; not just what Freud said about passivity but why and when. What emerges is quite revealing.

Passivity first appears as a neutral and unbiased term to describe victims of sexual abuse who were Freud's first patients. With the recantation of the seduction theory, he shifts his emphasis away from external experience to the study of the passive aims in individual psychology. Much has already been made of this shift, with Freud's motives being variously attributed to genuine doubt, a failure of nerve, or a more conscious and deliberate effort