ABSTRACT
Freud's seduction hypothesis proposed that when a child was overstimulated sexually by an adult, the result was anxiety and repression. This chapter focuses on the girl named Bella, who has ostensibly won her Oedipal struggle. This is the girl who feels she is preferred over her mother by her father; the girl who feels she is given greater adoration than the mother. Freud did not deem the role of fatherhood particularly significant until the child reached the Oedipal phase of development. The child enters the Oedipal phase of development already influenced and shaped by her pre-Oedipal years. The act of seduction can have an overwhelming destructive effect on a child's intrapsychic stability and development. The child may experience conscious and unconscious rage towards her seducer as well as feelings of guilt. The defence of repression is commonly induced which protects the individual from the incestuous meaning of the seductive behavior.
