Seduction Theory Research Articles

Trauma and the loss of basic trust

Ferenczi's discovery of trauma was labelled by Freud as a return “to errors” that he himself upheld he had committed before 1897. During the dramatic period running from the Wiesbaden Congress (September 1932) to Ferenczi's death (May 1933), Freud wrote to numerous correspondents (among them Jones, Eitingon, and his daughter Anna) complaining that Ferenczi's latest theoretical elaboration corresponded to a simple return to the origin of psychoanalysis and was also a symptom of a serious psychosis. The theme of this paper is that Freud's opinion concerning Ferenczi's concept of trauma is a result of misunderstanding: the trauma as described by Ferenczi is not the one that preceded (in Freud's theory) the desertion of the seduction theory, but is something that is much deeper and mortifying, where the sexuality role is less central. The author pauses to ponder and reflect on the importance of the concept of Erschütterung as a cause in losing basic trust, a perspective that moves far from Freudian sex-centrism that puts psychoanalysis face to face with the sufferings of the victims of extreme trauma.

Recalque originário, gênero e sofrimento psíquico

São propostas, neste artigo, articulações entre o recalque originário, compreendido desde a teoria da sedução generalizada de Jean Laplanche, e o conceito de gênero. O enfoque principal será o papel da alteridade na formação do conflito psíquico em suas relações com o gênero, o sexo e a identificação. Por essas articulações, procura-se demonstrar como o conceito de gênero ocupa lugar fundamental dentro da metapsicologia psicanalítica. Em seguida, serão exploradas as vicissitudes que a identidade de gênero pode vir a assumir na masculinidade e na feminilidade, procurando entender a especificidade do sofrimento psíquico ligado a cada uma dessas categorias.

Fixing Freud: The Oedipus Complex in Early Twenty-First Century US American Novels

Representations of Sigmund Freud in early 21st century US American novels rely on and respond to the image of Freud that emerged from investigations by Paul Roazen ("Brother Animal," 1969) and Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson ("The Assault on Truth," 1984), which cast doubt on the validity of the Oedipus complex. Relying on Roazen, Brenda Webster's "Vienna Triangle" (2009) links Freud's oedipal thinking to paranoia and male masochism. Working with Masson, Selden Edwards's "The Little Book" (2008) takes Freud to task for abandoning the seduction theory in favor of the Oedipus complex. Jed Rubenfeld's "The Interpretation of Murder" (2006) rethinks the Oedipus complex as a projection of adults onto their children. All three novels seek to celebrate Freud's understanding of the human psyche, while shifting the focus of the oedipal structure away from the murderous and lustful child toward the adult.

“You are Requested to Close an Eye”: Freud's Seduction Theory and Theory of the Oedipus Complex Revisited

“You are Requested to Close an Eye”: Freud's Seduction Theory and Theory of the Oedipus Complex RevisitedSiegfried Zepf and Florian D. ZepfSiegfried ZepfSearch for more papers by this author and Florian D. ZepfNarzissenstraße 5 D-66119 Saarbrücken Germany E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online::June 2011https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2011.98.3.287PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations About Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Cited byCited by1. Whose Genitalia Are Involved In The Dissolution Of The Oedipus Complex In Boys?Online publication date: 8 July 2022. Go to citation Crossref Google ScholarSiegfried Zepf and Judith Zepf2. Little Hans and the “Enigmatic Messages” of His ParentsOnline publication date: 9 December 2020. Go to citation Crossref 3. Oedipus and the Oedipus complex: a revisionOnline publication date: 31 December 2017. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar4. Edipo y el complejo de Edipo: Una revisiónOnline publication date: 13 July 2017. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar5. Penisneid und weiblicher ÖdipuskomplexOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar6. Book Essay on The Seduction Theory in its Second Century: Trauma, Fantasy, and Reality TodayOnline publication date: 5 August 2013. Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar Volume 98Issue 3Jun 2011 Information© 2011 N.P.A.P.PDF download

Attachment theory as defense: What happened to infantile sexuality?

Louisville, KentuckyNearly a century after the publication of “ Wild Psychoanalysis ” (Freud,1910) we struggle to grasp the full scope of one of Freud’s seminalcontributions and perhaps his most controversial idea, infantile sexuality. In1905, with the publication of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,we observe Freud’s theoretical shift from seduction theory to infantilesexuality as he declares the sexual as the subject of psychoanalysis. Despitethis incredible discovery, in the past 50 years, our eld has steadily movedaway from the concept of infantile sexuality in favor of attachment as thecentral component in psychological development. It is argued in this paperthat Freud always recognized the importance of healthy attachment as animportant variable in development, but that he was interested in infantilesexuality as a separate, but related, aspect of development. This paper callsfor a reevaluation of this endangered concept for the purpose of rediscov-ering that infantile sexuality with its emphasis on the body as the earliestmeans of emotional regulation and self-experience is the conduit to under-standing our psychosomatic nature that is fundamental, along with relatedimplications for development of gender, anxiety disorders, perversions, andother signi cant developmental and clinical variables.Keywords: attachment, sexuality, pschosexuality, gender, metapsychologyNearly a century after the publication of “ Wild Psychoanalysis ” (Freud, 1910) we struggleto grasp the full scope of one of Freud’s seminal contributions and particularly his mostcontroversial idea, infantile sexuality. With the theoretical shift in 1905 from seductiontheory to infantile sexuality, Freud declares the sexual as the subject of psychoanalysis,af rming the centrality of Triebe over Instinkt and forever changing, as did Darwin andCopernicus before him, our worldview and self-perception. By 1910, the world hasalready felt the reverberations of Freud’s idea, and has begun to show the earliest signs ofmisapprehension and misunderstanding.

Attachment and the driving force of development: A critical discussion of empirical infant research

Empirical infant research has led to an enormous expansion of our knowledge of the psychological functions of the infant. From a psychoanalytic perspective, however, it must be questioned whether this research has increased our knowledge of internal psychic life and helped answer the questions of what initiates and drives development. In the first part of this article, we argue that psychoanalysis must necessarily adopt a critical stance towards a scholarly ideal that rests on the positivist empirical tradition. Psychoanalysis has as its object unconscious processes that cannot be directly observed. In the following section, we take as our point of departure the project of attachment theory that Peter Fonagy and his colleagues have developed in an attempt to reconcile psychoanalysis with the empirical and experimental study of small children, and we demonstrate concretely the limitations of such a project vis-à-vis the exploration of the psychic reality of the child. Our line of reasoning continues to demonstrate how drive theory can be shaped so as to contain an object relations theoretical perspective – as has taken place in Jean Laplanche's reinterpretation of the theory of seduction – without abandoning the psychoanalytic theory of the drive and the unconscious.

“Worthless Female Material”: Nursemaids and Governesses in Freud's Cases

The figure of the governess, central in Freud's own history, is present in most of his cases. Freud described his nursemaid as "the prime originator" of his neuroses. Well after Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory, female servants were consistently portrayed as seducing boys, while their relationship with girls consisted of identification and rivalry. The role of Freud's own surrogate mother in his life and writing is examined, and two cases, Lucy R. and Dora, are looked at through the lens of female caretaking. A review and integration of relevant literature is followed by an exploration of the perplexing adherence in Freud's writing to the reality of seduction by a governess, even after he had abandoned the seduction theory. It is argued that it is in the figure of the female maid that the "shadowy" early history of Freud's mothering experiences may actually be engaged, however indirectly and unconsciously. This figure, and Freud's powerful, problematic identification with her, is a thread that when pulled helps unravel struggles in Freud's early theoretical development around issues of female sexuality and analytic authority. Revisiting Lucy R. and Dora provides a new perspective on Freud's difficulty with maternal transferences, and restores to their original importance his "worthless" governesses, those first analysts.

Sports—Applied Psychoanalysis Par Excellence

Understanding the ubiquitous human phenomena associated with sports requires a “depth” psychology like psychoanalysis, among other theoretical tools. Sports exemplify basic Freudian concepts, such as unconscious motivation, unconscious conflict and compromise, and the centrality of sexual, aggressive, narcissistic, and attachment themes throughout the human life cycle. Sports also provide powerful illustrations of some of the important recent developments in psychoanalytic theory, including Lacan's work on the Imaginary and Symbolic registers; Kohut's psychology of the self and the role of selfobjects in development; Butler's feminist-psychoanalytic theories on performativity, gender binaries, and the unmourned losses at the root of gender; Laplanche's “general theory of seduction”; and the work of the psychoanalytically influenced sociologist Rene Girard. Finally, sports have a natural kinship with psychoanalysis because both involve the interrelationships among the intrapsychic, interpersonal, and social realms.

Ethical Dilemmas in Auditing: Dishonesty or Unintentional Bias?

Moral Seduction Theory suggests that auditors are morally compromised by the perceived consequences of their opinions. The root of the auditing problem appears to result in an unintentional bias rather than in dishonesty. Although important accounting reforms have been taken to deal with auditors’ trustworthiness, their lack of independence has not been adequately addressed. The new regulation (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) is a consequence of an incorrect understanding of the main true source of auditor’s biases. We have developed a cognitive approach by connecting the Throughput Model (TM) to the Moral Seduction Theory. This approach allows a better understanding of how conflicts of interest lead auditors to avoid the issuance of warning signals to stakeholders. We have tested our model by conducting a hypothetical scenario with eighty experienced auditors from international accounting firms. Our results confirm auditors’ unintentional reluctance to issue qualified audit opinions alerting investors due to their fear of precipitating clients’ final bankruptcy. The main implication is that, more than a regulation, effort should be made in monitoring those conflicts of interest to reduce unintentional bias.

Freud's family romance with Princess Marie: Benoît Jacquot resurrects the childhood seduction theory

ABSTRACTBenoît Jacquot has, throughout his cinematic career, repeatedly ventured into the hothouse of psychoanalytic debate, either directly (in Jacques Lacan's Psychoanalysis) or indirectly (in Sade and Le Septième ciel). In Princesse Marie, Jacquot uses Marie Bonaparte's encounter with Freud to revisit the question of childhood seduction that has plagued psychoanalysis from its inception. The almost obsessive insistence on the question of seduction in the film's opening minutes sets the stage for a discussion of two capital texts (the Leonardo and the Freud/Fliess Correspondence), in which Freud aired his own ambivalence about this question—one that was to lead him directly to the ‘discovery’ of the Oedipus complex and to the articulation of psychoanalytic theory in general. Analysis of these elements of the film will help us appreciate the way Jacquot uses Princesse Marie to question Freud's abandonment of the seduction theory, and to suggest the ways in which seduction is inherent to the ontology of the cinema.

From end time to the time of the end: some reflections about the emergence of subjectivity

In this article, the author presents the first ten years of the analysis of a young patient who just barely escaped an onset of schizophrenia. The patient showed defences of the self that had been frozen with regard to his relationship to time, and had shut him outside of any rapport with time, forcing him to seek-as desperately as unconsciously-a 'time of the end', a present time. He explores different 'lived times': circular and linear times that are both classical in Jungian theory; he then describes what he calls subjective linear 'lived time' as a modality for opening up instinctual objectivity to subjectivity's access to the symbolic. In his theorization of this passage, he uses the Greek notion of Kairos as well as the French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche's theory of originary seduction. Finally, he ties this transition to recent theories in physics of complex systems, also called chaos theory, and poses the hypothesis that this model can represent two essential qualities of subjectivity: its non-predictability and its non-reproductability.

“After A Long Pause”: How to Read Dora as History

Freud's "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" (1905a,b) is well recognized for making psychoanalytic history. In the Dora paper Freud first publicized a new theory of the etiology of neurosis that made fantasy and repression central. And yet the paper also refers to trauma and seduction. What role do they play in the text? Part 1 shows that this is not a case of Freud broadening his etiological framework by adding a new focus to older ones. Rather, the references to trauma and seduction in Dora need to be understood in two ways. First, there is in the 1905 paper an implicit theoretical autobiography, of which Freud's references to the trauma and seduction theories early in the paper are part. Second, Freud's reference to seduction later in the paper constitutes Freud's first public critique of the seduction theory. The Dora paper is the actual site of the abandonment of the seduction theory. In Part 2 the focus shifts to the text's "theoretical unconscious." Despite its rejection of the seduction theory in its avowed theorizing, the text is haunted by displaced signifiers of the theory. This suggests that Freud was unconsciously conflicted about not applying the insights of the seduction theory to Dora.

The Singing 'Vice': Music and Mischief in Early English Drama

The 'Vice' — a corrupt character frequent in early English drama — engages in mischief ranging from the benignly annoying to the outright wicked. His activities typically include subterfuge that results in the seduction of the dramatic hero, other characters, and even members of the audience. Music is a frequent device in the Vice's project. From the standpoints of Baudrillard's theory of seduction and of sixteenth-century and contemporary perspectives on theatrical music, improvisation, acting, and ethopoieia, this essay explores the role of singing in what Robert Weimann and Douglas Bruster term the Vice's 'personation'. The effect of the Vice's musicality in the representation and achievement of seduction in plays from Mankind to Shakespeare is also considered, with particular emphasis on three intervening interludes: John Heywood’s comedy A Play of the Wether, Bale’s history play King Johan, and Pickering’s pseudo-classical revenge tragedy Horestes.

Harry Frankfurt's metaphysics of care

Harry Frankfurt's conception of care and love has largely been considered a seductive theory of personality, but an untenable and irresponsible theory of moral normativity. Contrary to that interpretation, this article aims at showing that it is possible to remain faithful to Frankfurt's metaphysical premises while not falling into some moral relativism. First, by comparing Frankfurt's and Heidegger's conceptions of care, I show that Frankfurt's subordination of ethics to carology apparently commits him to a neutral foundationalism. In the next step, I argue that his calling into question of the relation between rationality and morality does indeed subject moral normativity to some subjective and contingent limits. And finally, I show that the objections raised against such a conclusion can be answered by shifting Frankfurt's frontier between contingency and necessity and by exploiting his concept of wholeheartedness.

A KLEINIAN THEORY OF SEXUALITY

abstract The author examines claims made some years ago by Green (1995), but still referenced today by others, that the theoretical and clinical emphasis given by British Object Relations theorists – Balint, Fairbairn, Winnicott and especially Klein – to the pregenital dimension of the mother–infant relationship has reduced the importance of sexuality in psychoanalysis resulting in a desexualization of classical theory and practice. The author notes that, except for Parsons (2000) and Litowitz (2002), these charges have gone unchallenged and he wishes to contribute to this ‘debate’ by presenting a Kleinian theory of sexuality. Meltzer's (1973) book Sexual States of Mind will be used as a primer for such a theory since the explicit goal of this text is a structural revision of psychoanalytic sexual theory from an Object Relations perspective. Through Meltzer's concept of ‘sexual states of mind’, and his sub‐theory of ‘aesthetic reciprocity’ as a theory of primal seduction, the author will demonstrate how the diverse features of infantile and adult sexuality are given a very detailed, comprehensive understanding within an Object Relations paradigm. In fact, if there has been a turning away from sexuality in psychoanalysis, as Green and others contend, it is not because of Object Relations theory but because of the great complexity brought to our understanding of sexuality by Object Relations paradigms. The author presents this paper as a tribute to Donald Meltzer who died in August 2004.

Sinusitis und okuläre Motilitätseinschränkungen

Secondary inflammatory orbital involvement due to acute or chronic sinusitis is common. The pneumatized system of the paranasal sinuses is abut to the bones of the orbit in up to 80 percent, therefore the association is a seductive theory due to their anatomic closeness. Typically, sinusitis can influence ocular motility by affecting single muscles or a combination of muscles/cranial nerves due to a local inflammatory tissue reaction. The expected picture would be a more or less complex restriction of eye movements. In this case study nine consecutive patients were prospectively included between January 2006 and August 2007. Five of the patients did not experience any motility disorder, the other four had a restricted motility. Case reports of the four patients are presented to demonstrate the range of ocular motility disorders related to sinusitis. Orbital complications due to sinusitis include motility disorders among others. They can even cause orbital sepsis and cavernous sinus thrombosis. On the one hand sinusitis can affect almost the whole spectrum of ocular motility disorders, on the other hand it may mask a dangerous cerebral aneurysm. The "close-lying" connections, as seductive they are, should not divert from the rule: infrequent causes are infrequent and frequent causes are frequent!

A Further Excavation of Seduction, Seduction Trauma, and the Seduction Theory

Freud's pre-analytic concept of seduction trauma was interwoven with the emerging concepts of an unconscious pathogenic past, repression, and reconstruction. The formulation of this theory of neurosogenesis involved important current, as well as past, determinants. Freud was psychologically seduced by Fliess and unwittingly colluded in the nearly fatal surgery Fliess performed on Emma Eckstein. The formulation and subsequent repudiation of the seduction theory approximated the period from the traumatic experience of Freud with his patient Emma Eckstein to her apparent recovery. Freud's seduction theory, with its focus on childhood sexual abuse, simultaneously defended against both aggression and the current traumatic situation. Defenses against aggression were intensified in an atmosphere of virulent anti-Semitism. The seduction theory is relevant to contemporary issues concerning psychic trauma, psychic reality and objective reality, memory, and reconstruction.

FREUD AND HISTORY BEFORE 1905: FROM DEFENDING TO QUESTIONING THE THEORY OF A GLORIOUS PAST

By sticking closely to Freud's use of the German term Geschichte (history, story) between 1894 and 1905, I will reveal two conceptions of history. The first one, the theory of the glorious past and its archaeological metaphor, which accompanied and sustained the seduction theory of cultural history. I will define how this change was determined by an evolution in Freud's conceptions of childhood prehistory and original history. I will also question how the history problem interfered with Freud's auto-analysis.

Seduction and The Vicissitudes of Translation: the Work of Jean Laplanche

This paper aims to analyze Jean Laplanche’s revision of Freudian metapsychology, which emerged from a critical return to Freud’s officially abandoned seduction theory of 1895–1897. Where Freud gradually replaced the model of traumatic seduction with a theory of infantile sexuality and its drives, Laplanche articulates both trauma and sexual drive in a new theory of primal seduction, the fundamental anthropological situation in which human subjectivity is formed. The author concludes by considering Laplanche’s modeling of the psychoanalytic situation and his reformulation of transference in relation to mourning and sublimation within the framework of the general theory of seduction.

Isolated oculomotor nerve palsy related to sinusitis?

The association of sinusitis with ocular motility disorders is a seductive theory due to their close anatomical vicinity. Typically, sinusitis can influence ocular motility by affecting single muscles or a combination of muscles and/or cranial nerves due to a local inflammatory tissue reaction. Although rare, sinusitis has been suggested at least as a cause for superior-branch oculomotor palsy. We report a case of progressive, isolated, third-cranial-nerve palsy caused by an aneurysm of the posterior-communicating artery that initially was thought to be related to pansinusitis.