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Making its appearance in three 1896 papers (Freud 1896a, b, c), Freud's seduction theory (or more precisely, theories, as there are different versions) posits that in every case of hysteria there is sexual abuse in the earliest years of childhood that can reemerge through the work of psychoanalysis despite the intervening decades. Further, “No hysterical symptom can arise from the real experience alone, but … in every case the memory of earlier experiences awakened in association to it plays a part in causing the symptom” (Freud 1896a, p. 197). Blass and Simon (1994) note that the “formal seduction theory” emphasizes deferred action (Nachträglichkeit). A prepubertal genital stimulation occurs that is not traumatic. A postpubertal seduction takes place that “may range in severity from an almost inadvertent brush of the knee to consummated incest” that “revives the memory of the early seduction” (Blass and Simon 1994, p. 679). It is the revival of the earlier stimulation, which had not previously been registered, that is necessary for the development of hysterical symptoms.
In his often cited September 1897 letter to Fliess (cited in Good, p. 259), in which he questions this theory, Freud writes that “there are no indications of reality in the unconscious, so … one cannot distinguish between the truth and fiction that is cathected with affect. (Thus, the possibility remained open that sexual phantasy invariably seizes upon the theme of the parents)” (p. 260). That Freud had actively reconstructed the abuse, rather than heard of it from his patients' spontaneous reports, made him question whether he could justify his theory of “neurotica.”