[From the seduction theory to the oedipus complex]

The author reviews the Freudian theory of seduction as it was presented in the last decade of the XIX century. Freud began to talk about the effects of the seduction in the clinical history of Katherine, (Studies on Hysteria, 1893 - 1895). In 1896 in Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses, Freud considered the seduction as the specific cause of the psychoneurosis, and latter in The Aetiology of Hysteria, he separated himself from Breuer and Charcot. In Further Remarks on The Neuro - Psychoses of Defense, Freud relates seduction with repression. The author thinks that his father death makes him doubt this theory. These oscillations went hand in hand with his auto-analysis, as it is related in the letters of October 3 and 15, 1897. In these letters the love to the mother and the jealousy to the father are introduced as key features. Nevertheless, the theory of seduction comes back recurrently in the works of Freud, and as late as 1906, in My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neurose, he seems to down play the importance as a aetiology feature, considering that the hysterical patient falsified his memories and replaced them with fantasies. Towards the end of his life, in An Outline of Psycho - Analysis, Freud stated that the cares of the mother makes her in the first seducer of the child. According to Etchegoyen (2003), Freud never abandoned the theory of seduction.