The Seduction Hypothesis

THE CHAIRMAN INTRODUCED THE PARTICIPANTS and outlined the format for the panel: Erna Furman would begin with "A Review of Freud's Thinking and Some Recent Considerations"; Robert Furman would present "Reflections from Clinical Child Psychoanalysis"; Miriam Williams would follow with "A Clinical Case Presentation Dealing with the Reconstruction of an Early Seduction and its Aftermaths"; after an intermission, Robert Wallerstein would provide a formal discussion of the previous papers and the topic; the meeting would then be opened to the audience for general discussion with the panelists.

Erna Furman began by highlighting the trends of Freud's thinking about the subject of inner versus outer reality of infantile sexual experiences and their effect on neurotic pathology. In 1896, three papers related the roots of neurotic pathology to sexual experiences in early childhood that cause overstimulation of the immature psychic system. They include children hearing and seeing the sexual activities of adults and particularly being subject to direct stimulation of the genitals as well as to perverse practices involving other bodily zones. In the years that followed, however, prompted by further experiences with patients and the beginning of his self-analysis, Freud found that the neurotics' fantasies were not mere replicas of infantile memories. He came to regard these fantasies as complex protective structures which both contained and distorted the actual early experiences and mainly served to ward off the "impulses which arise from these primal scenes."

Freud's well-known letter to Fliess of September 21, 1897, came as no surprise. He had ceased to view the young child's psyche as an instinctual blank and began to devote his investigative genius to the exploration of the drives in childhood and their role in normal and pathological personality development. Neither then, nor at any later