The value of the historical perspective to contemporary psychoanalysis: Freud's 'seduction hypothesis'

In this paper the authors re-examine the development of Freud's ideas on seduction, with a special focus on the evidence which Freud presented and upon which he relied as he attempted to confirm these ideas. Through this re-examination Freud's struggle with seductiveness, both in relation to his patients and in relation to his theories, comes to the fore. While the wish to be with the other through exerting an influence over him or her is perverted in the act of sexual seduction, it is, nevertheless, a force that must be recognised and contended with in other creative interchanges, including the analytic one. In studying Freud's struggle with this force, there is attained a better appreciation of the humanness, including the inevitable human limitations, of Freud and his thinking that rest at the foundation of psychoanalysis. This study thus has clear implications for the history of psychoanalysis, but, more importantly, it reveals the value for contemporary psychoanalysis in recognising this history.