Silencing the patient: Freud, sexual abuse, and “the etiology of hysteria”

Abstract

In “The Etiology of Hysteria, “ the young Sigmund Freud defended the “seduction theory,” which asserted that the sexual abuse of children was the single cause of hysteria in adults and especially adult women. This essay argues that one can attribute Freud's failure to persuade his original audience not only to their denial of sexual abuse, but also to Freud's failure to make clear how the young science of psychoanalysis could comport with traditional models of medical authority.