On the Psychology and Psychopathology of Primal-Scene Experience

Primal-scene experience has held a position of importance in psychoanalysis since Freud's reports concerning the traumatic and psychopathogenic effects that observation or imagination of parental sexuality had on some of his early patients. The possibility of such experiences resulting in psychiatric disorder has been at the center of much serious concern, of course, perhaps at the expense of a broader appreciation of the psychological and psychoanalytic meaning of the primal scene. This paper will first present a survey of the signs and symbols of the primal scene, and then review the various attempts that have been made, beginning with Freud's ideas, to explain reactions to such experiences. Attention will then be directed to the controversial question of whether primal-scene experience is generally traumatic, and, when it is, under what circumstances. Finally, some recent empirical studies will be discussed that shed further light on both the incidence and range of primal-scene experience and some of the factors that influence reactions to it.

Our origins both attract and repel us. The question, “Where did I come from?” often arouses anxieties of a fundamental sort. The link to parental sexuality and the “primal scene” is inherent. The cosmological explanation generally involves a struggle in darkness, with a bursting into lightness heralding the Creation, as in Genesis. Ancient legend has it that the Japanese islands resulted from the