ABSTRACT
In 1896 Sigmund Freud published “On the Aetiology of Hysteria,” a controversial paper advancing a theory that explained adult psychological disorders as latter-day expressions of childhood sexual trauma, otherwise known as the “seduction theory.” Freud would later call this his “first great error.” For a short time, however, Freud believed that he had found the root of adult hysteria: the use and abuse of the child as a sexualized object by the adult. According to the seduction theory, early sexual experiences up to the age of four were necessarily traumatic and so necessitated the ego-defense Freud called “repression.” Freud began to suspect that adult hysteria-what we call neurosis today-was repressed affect from childhood emerging in disguised form.
