ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the transformations undergone by psychoanalytic theory during the late 1890s. It examines the bones of the seduction theory while leaving aside for the moment the issues of evidential support and scientific methodology. By 1914, therefore, Sigmund Freud was stating that his patients themselves attributed their symptoms to infantile seductions. In fact, as Freud makes clear, the scenes of seduction can only be discovered in an indirect, inferential manner, like an unknown language which must be 'decyphered and translated' in order to yield 'undreamed of information'. Thus, Freud's 'reproductions' are proxies for the unconscious scenes of seduction. Screen memories are understood as later transformations of early memories in order to ward off other early memories. This concept of screen memories became generally accepted within the psychoanalytic community. Freud's first theory of screen memories has in effect been a lost psychoanalytic legacy.
