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It is a measure of the current demoralization in psychoanalytic scholarship that one of Freud's brilliant achievements in memory is underplayed or, even, treated as an embarrassment.
In 1896 Freud set forth his well-known infantile seduction thesis “that at the bottom of every case of hysteria there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experience” (1896, p. 202) and that these “unconscious memories … create and maintain hysterical symptoms” (p. 211). Soon assailed by doubts, Freud agonized over the issue and within a decade formally withdrew the hypothesis. How many major figures in “scientific” psychology, one might wonder, have come forward to recant a failed theory? Ironically, Freud is excoriated either for his original mistake or for his recantation (typically, on the scientifically impermissible ground of character or motive). Also, typically, the disclaimed hypothesis is miscast: It is not the existence of childhood sexual abuse that Freud rejects—“I thus overestimated the frequency of such events (though