The seduction theory
by Han Israels sand Morton Schatzman. History of Psychiatry, iv (1993), 23-59.
In the heat of the debate between Masson and his psychoanalytic opponents very few people have noticed that Masson attributed to Freud a version of the seduction theory that has never existed. According to Masson, Freud believed the stories his patients told him about their childhood traumas. However, in Freud’s own 1896 version, no patients told him such stories. One essential aspect of Freud’s 1896 seduction theory is different from what Masson wants us to believe: in 1896 Freud thought that his hysterical patients suffered from unconscious memories of sexual abuse in their early childhood. According to Freud the patients themselves did not consciously know that they had been sexually abused.