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The Freudian Coverup

The Freudian Cover-up is a theory introduced by social worker Florence Rush in 1971, which asserts that Sigmund Freud intentionally ignored evidence that his patients were victims of sexual abuse.[1][2] The theory argues that in developing his theory of infant sexuality, he misinterpreted his patients' claim of sexual abuse as symptoms of repressed incestuous desire. Therefore, Freud claimed that children who reported sexual abuse by adults had either imagined or fantasized the experience.

Rush introduced The Freudian Coverup in her presentation The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View, about childhood sexual abuse and incest, at the April 1971 New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) Rape Conference.[3]

The theory (though under a different name) was given further promotion in 1984 through the publishing of the book The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory, by psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. He believed he independently came to the same conclusion as Rush through his review of the materials in the Freud Archives.

Background Edit

Early in Freud's career, he believed that girls often experienced sexual abuse, since most of his patients were women and consistently reported childhood instances of sexual molestation. Many of Freud's patients suffered from a common Victorian diagnosis, hysteria. Since his hysterical patients repeatedly reported sexual abuse, most often naming their fathers as the abusers, Freud drew a causal connection between sexual abuse and neurosis. This became the frame for the seduction theory, in which he pointed to a direct connection between sexual abuse in childhood and adult hysteria. According to Florence Rush, author of The Freudian Cover-up, this repeated and persistent incrimination of fathers by his patients made him uneasy, and led him to abandon the seduction theory. More at ease with the fantasy rather than reality of sexual abuse, Freud was even more comfortable when he could name the mother rather than the father as the seducer. Hence, the "Oedipal complex" came into fruition. Other feminists who supported Rush's claims are Susan Brownmiller, Louise Armstrong, and Diana Russell.

Before Freud could conclude that the seduction by fathers was a fantasy, he had to be rid of his earlier theory. Since men did not complain of maternal seduction Freud limited the imagined abuse to a specific female problem. To remove the responsibility from fathers, Freud found it necessary to undermine the perceptions of his female patients.[4]

Within the period between the 1970s and 1980s, and 1990s, arguments were made that Freud abandoned his initial beliefs in women's accounts of abuse (the Seduction theory), and replaced it with the Oedipal theory; this illustrates the ways in which he withheld or altered information from his patients, which is unacceptable in a professional context. The Freudian Cover-up exposed Freud’s theory, the refusal to name the offender, but furthermore, one man's attempt to hide illegal or immoral sex practices. It was within this time that Victorian men were permitted to indulge in forbidden sex, provided they managed to keep their indiscretions hidden. Freud, who regarded the incest taboo as vital to the advance of civilization, appeared to demand only that forbidden sex be practiced with tact and discretion so that the surface of Victorian respectability was in no way disturbed. Therefore, any attempt on the part of the child or her family to expose the violator exposes her own alleged innate sexual motives and shamed her more than the offender; concealment is her only recourse.[5]

Criticism Edit

The historian Peter Gay, author of Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988), emphasizes that Freud continued to believe that some patients were sexually abused, but realized that there was a difficulty in determining between truth and fiction. Therefore, according to Gay, there was no sinister motive in changing his theory; Freud was a scientist seeking the facts and was entitled to change his views if new evidence was presented to him.[6]

A different criticism comes from Freud scholars who have examined the original documents and argue that the above account contains several misconceptions. Florence Rush based her account on Freud's later retrospective reports of the 1895-97 episode, which are seriously at variance with the original 1896 papers[7] and other documents which show that it is not the case that Freud's female patients at that time consistently reported childhood instances of sexual molestation. Prior to the 1896 papers he had not reported a single instance of early childhood sexual abuse (and very few cases of any kind of sexual abuse).[8] The very essence of the seduction theory entailed that only unconscious memories of early childhood sexual abuse could result in hysterical or obsessional symptoms, which is inconsistent with the notion of patients coming to him with reports of childhood sexual abuse; on Freud's theory the putative memories were deeply repressed and not accessible to consciousness in normal circumstances.[9] (It is also the case that Freud's 1896 clinical claims were not restricted to women: in the 1896 paper The Aetiology of Hysteria one third of the patients were men.)[10]

Freud twice stated that he would be presenting the clinical evidence for his claims,[11] but he never did so, which critics have argued means that his clinical claims have had to be taken largely on trust.[12] Numerous Freud scholars and academics have voiced serious doubts about the validity of his claim in 1896 to have uncovered unconscious memories (later unconscious fantasies) of infantile sexual abuse, mostly below the age of four.[13]

Notes Edit

  1. ^ Connell, Noreen and Wilson, Casandra, eds. Rape: The First Sourcebook for Women by New York Radical Feminists New American Library, 1974 p. 65
  2. ^ Rush, Florence, The Best Kept Secret: The Sexual Abuse of Children, Prentice Hall, 1980
  3. ^ Connell, Noreen and Wilson, Casandra, eds. Rape: The First Sourcebook for Women by New York Radical Feminists New American Library, 1974 p. 65
  4. ^ "The Freudian Coverup" article
  5. ^ "The Freudian Coverup: A Reappraisal"
  6. ^ Gay, Peter (17 June 2006). Freud: A Life for Our Time. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-32861-5.
  7. ^ Schimek (1987); Israëls & Schatzman (1993).
  8. ^ Freud, Standard Edition, vol. 2, 1895, Studies on Hysteria; vol. 3, 1895, "Obsessions and phobias: Their psychical mechanism and their aetiology", pp. 71-82; Esterson (1998), (2001).
  9. ^ Freud, S.E.3, 1896c, pp. 191-192, 204, 211; Paul, R. A. (1985). Freud and the Seduction Theory: A Critical Examination of Masson's "The Assault on Truth", Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, vol. 8, pp. 161-187; Schimek (1987); Toews, J. E. (1991). Historicizing Psychoanalysis: Freud in His Time and for Our Time, Journal of Modern History, 63, pp. 504-545; McNally (2003), pp. 159-169.
  10. ^ Freud, 1896c, pp. 207-208; Esterson (1998).
  11. ^ Freud, 1896b, p. 162; 1896c, p. 203; Esterson (1998), (2001).
  12. ^ Smith, D. L. (1991). Hidden Conversations: An Introduction to Communicative Psychoanalysis, Routledge, pp. 3-15; McCullough (2001); Triplett (2005). The Misnomer of Freud's "Seduction Theory", Journal of the History of Ideas, University of Pennsylvania Press.
  13. ^ Freud, S.E. 3, 1896c, p. 212; Cioffi, F. (1998[1974]), pp. 199-204; Schimek (1987); Israëls & Schatzman (1993); Hergenhahn (1997), pp. 484-485; Allen (1997), pp. 43-45; Eissler (2001), pp. 107-117; McCullough (2001); McNally (2003), pp. 159-169.

References Edit

  • Allen, B. P. (1997). Personality Theories: Development, Growth and Diversity, Boston: Allyn & Bacon, pp. 43–45.
  • Cioffi, F. (1998) [1974]. Was Freud a liar? Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience. Chicago: Open Court, pp. 199–204.
  • Eissler, K. R. (2001) Freud and the Seduction Theory: A Brief Love Affair. New York: International Universities Press.
  • Esterson, A. (1993). Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud. Chicago, Ill: Open Court.
  • Esterson, A. (1998). Jeffrey Masson and Freud’s seduction theory: a new fable based on old myths. History of the Human Sciences, 11 (1), pp. 1–21. http://human-nature.com/esterson/
  • Esterson, A. (2001). The mythologizing of psychoanalytic history: deception and self-deception in Freud’s accounts of the seduction theory episode. History of Psychiatry, Vol. 12, Part 3, September 2001, pp. 329–352.
  • Esterson, A. (2002). The myth of Freud’s ostracism by the medical community in 1896-1905: Jeffrey Masson’s assault on truth. History of Psychology, 5 (2), pp. 115–134.
  • Freud, S. (1896a). Heredity and the aetiology of the neuroses. Standard Edition Vol. 3, 143-156.
  • Freud, S. (1896b). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence. Standard Edition Vol. 3, 162-185.
  • Freud, S. (1896c). The aetiology of hysteria. Standard Edition, Vol. 3, 191-221.
  • Hergenhahn, B.R. (1997), An Introduction to the History of Psychology, Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
  • Israëls, H. and Schatzman, M. (1993) The Seduction Theory. History of Psychiatry, iv: 23-59.
  • McCullough, M. L. (2001). Freud's seduction theory and its rehabilitation: A saga of one mistake after another. Review of General Psychology, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 3–22.
  • Masson, J. M. (1984). The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • Masson, J. M. (editor) (1985). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904. ed. and trans. J. M. Masson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • McNally, R.J. (2003), Remembering Trauma, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Rush, F. (1980). The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • Schimek, J. G. (1987). Fact and Fantasy in the Seduction Theory: a Historical Review. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, xxxv: 937-65.

freudian, coverup, freudian, cover, theory, introduced, social, worker, florence, rush, 1971, which, asserts, that, sigmund, freud, intentionally, ignored, evidence, that, patients, were, victims, sexual, abuse, theory, argues, that, developing, theory, infant. The Freudian Cover up is a theory introduced by social worker Florence Rush in 1971 which asserts that Sigmund Freud intentionally ignored evidence that his patients were victims of sexual abuse 1 2 The theory argues that in developing his theory of infant sexuality he misinterpreted his patients claim of sexual abuse as symptoms of repressed incestuous desire Therefore Freud claimed that children who reported sexual abuse by adults had either imagined or fantasized the experience Rush introduced The Freudian Coverup in her presentation The Sexual Abuse of Children A Feminist Point of View about childhood sexual abuse and incest at the April 1971 New York Radical Feminists NYRF Rape Conference 3 The theory though under a different name was given further promotion in 1984 through the publishing of the book The Assault on Truth Freud s Suppression of the Seduction Theory by psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson He believed he independently came to the same conclusion as Rush through his review of the materials in the Freud Archives Contents 1 Background 2 Criticism 3 Notes 4 ReferencesBackground EditFurther information Freud s seduction theory Early in Freud s career he believed that girls often experienced sexual abuse since most of his patients were women and consistently reported childhood instances of sexual molestation Many of Freud s patients suffered from a common Victorian diagnosis hysteria Since his hysterical patients repeatedly reported sexual abuse most often naming their fathers as the abusers Freud drew a causal connection between sexual abuse and neurosis This became the frame for the seduction theory in which he pointed to a direct connection between sexual abuse in childhood and adult hysteria According to Florence Rush author of The Freudian Cover up this repeated and persistent incrimination of fathers by his patients made him uneasy and led him to abandon the seduction theory More at ease with the fantasy rather than reality of sexual abuse Freud was even more comfortable when he could name the mother rather than the father as the seducer Hence the Oedipal complex came into fruition Other feminists who supported Rush s claims are Susan Brownmiller Louise Armstrong and Diana Russell Before Freud could conclude that the seduction by fathers was a fantasy he had to be rid of his earlier theory Since men did not complain of maternal seduction Freud limited the imagined abuse to a specific female problem To remove the responsibility from fathers Freud found it necessary to undermine the perceptions of his female patients 4 Within the period between the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s arguments were made that Freud abandoned his initial beliefs in women s accounts of abuse the Seduction theory and replaced it with the Oedipal theory this illustrates the ways in which he withheld or altered information from his patients which is unacceptable in a professional context The Freudian Cover up exposed Freud s theory the refusal to name the offender but furthermore one man s attempt to hide illegal or immoral sex practices It was within this time that Victorian men were permitted to indulge in forbidden sex provided they managed to keep their indiscretions hidden Freud who regarded the incest taboo as vital to the advance of civilization appeared to demand only that forbidden sex be practiced with tact and discretion so that the surface of Victorian respectability was in no way disturbed Therefore any attempt on the part of the child or her family to expose the violator exposes her own alleged innate sexual motives and shamed her more than the offender concealment is her only recourse 5 Criticism EditThe historian Peter Gay author of Freud A Life for Our Time 1988 emphasizes that Freud continued to believe that some patients were sexually abused but realized that there was a difficulty in determining between truth and fiction Therefore according to Gay there was no sinister motive in changing his theory Freud was a scientist seeking the facts and was entitled to change his views if new evidence was presented to him 6 A different criticism comes from Freud scholars who have examined the original documents and argue that the above account contains several misconceptions Florence Rush based her account on Freud s later retrospective reports of the 1895 97 episode which are seriously at variance with the original 1896 papers 7 and other documents which show that it is not the case that Freud s female patients at that time consistently reported childhood instances of sexual molestation Prior to the 1896 papers he had not reported a single instance of early childhood sexual abuse and very few cases of any kind of sexual abuse 8 The very essence of the seduction theory entailed that only unconscious memories of early childhood sexual abuse could result in hysterical or obsessional symptoms which is inconsistent with the notion of patients coming to him with reports of childhood sexual abuse on Freud s theory the putative memories were deeply repressed and not accessible to consciousness in normal circumstances 9 It is also the case that Freud s 1896 clinical claims were not restricted to women in the 1896 paper The Aetiology of Hysteria one third of the patients were men 10 Freud twice stated that he would be presenting the clinical evidence for his claims 11 but he never did so which critics have argued means that his clinical claims have had to be taken largely on trust 12 Numerous Freud scholars and academics have voiced serious doubts about the validity of his claim in 1896 to have uncovered unconscious memories later unconscious fantasies of infantile sexual abuse mostly below the age of four 13 Notes Edit Connell Noreen and Wilson Casandra eds Rape The First Sourcebook for Women by New York Radical Feminists New American Library 1974 p 65 Rush Florence The Best Kept Secret The Sexual Abuse of Children Prentice Hall 1980 Connell Noreen and Wilson Casandra eds Rape The First Sourcebook for Women by New York Radical Feminists New American Library 1974 p 65 The Freudian Coverup article The Freudian Coverup A Reappraisal Gay Peter 17 June 2006 Freud A Life for Our Time W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0 393 32861 5 Schimek 1987 Israels amp Schatzman 1993 Freud Standard Edition vol 2 1895 Studies on Hysteria vol 3 1895 Obsessions and phobias Their psychical mechanism and their aetiology pp 71 82 Esterson 1998 2001 Freud S E 3 1896c pp 191 192 204 211 Paul R A 1985 Freud and the Seduction Theory A Critical Examination of Masson s The Assault on Truth Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology vol 8 pp 161 187 Schimek 1987 Toews J E 1991 Historicizing Psychoanalysis Freud in His Time and for Our Time Journal of Modern History 63 pp 504 545 McNally 2003 pp 159 169 Freud 1896c pp 207 208 Esterson 1998 Freud 1896b p 162 1896c p 203 Esterson 1998 2001 Smith D L 1991 Hidden Conversations An Introduction to Communicative Psychoanalysis Routledge pp 3 15 McCullough 2001 Triplett 2005 The Misnomer of Freud s Seduction Theory Journal of the History of Ideas University of Pennsylvania Press Freud S E 3 1896c p 212 Cioffi F 1998 1974 pp 199 204 Schimek 1987 Israels amp Schatzman 1993 Hergenhahn 1997 pp 484 485 Allen 1997 pp 43 45 Eissler 2001 pp 107 117 McCullough 2001 McNally 2003 pp 159 169 References EditAllen B P 1997 Personality Theories Development Growth and Diversity Boston Allyn amp Bacon pp 43 45 Cioffi F 1998 1974 Was Freud a liar Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience Chicago Open Court pp 199 204 Eissler K R 2001 Freud and the Seduction Theory A Brief Love Affair New York International Universities Press Esterson A 1993 Seductive Mirage An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud Chicago Ill Open Court Esterson A 1998 Jeffrey Masson and Freud s seduction theory a new fable based on old myths History of the Human Sciences 11 1 pp 1 21 http human nature com esterson Esterson A 2001 The mythologizing of psychoanalytic history deception and self deception in Freud s accounts of the seduction theory episode History of Psychiatry Vol 12 Part 3 September 2001 pp 329 352 Esterson A 2002 The myth of Freud s ostracism by the medical community in 1896 1905 Jeffrey Masson s assault on truth History of Psychology 5 2 pp 115 134 Freud S 1896a Heredity and the aetiology of the neuroses Standard Edition Vol 3 143 156 Freud S 1896b Further remarks on the neuro psychoses of defence Standard Edition Vol 3 162 185 Freud S 1896c The aetiology of hysteria Standard Edition Vol 3 191 221 Hergenhahn B R 1997 An Introduction to the History of Psychology Pacific Grove CA Brooks Cole Israels H and Schatzman M 1993 The Seduction Theory History of Psychiatry iv 23 59 McCullough M L 2001 Freud s seduction theory and its rehabilitation A saga of one mistake after another Review of General Psychology vol 5 no 1 pp 3 22 Masson J M 1984 The Assault on Truth Freud s Suppression of the Seduction Theory New York Farrar Straus and Giroux Masson J M editor 1985 The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887 1904 ed and trans J M Masson Cambridge MA Harvard University Press McNally R J 2003 Remembering Trauma Cambridge MA Harvard University Press Rush F 1980 The Best Kept Secret Sexual Abuse of Children New York McGraw Hill Schimek J G 1987 Fact and Fantasy in the Seduction Theory a Historical Review Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association xxxv 937 65 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title The Freudian Coverup amp oldid 1162334546, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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