ABSTRACT
The epistemological rupture that was articulated by Sigmund Freud is that it is the encounter with sexuality per se, an encounter to which each of us is subjected, and that is the basis of the seduction hypothesis. It is the very concept of the Nachtraglichkeit that changed the place of Freud’s seduction hypothesis in regard to history and cause. Freud’s abandonment of the seduction hypothesis as an actual historical traumatic occurrence is also an abandonment of the notion of a strict chronological ordering in the unconscious. It is an epistemological rupture in that the seduction hypothesis is no longer posited as the overall aetiology of neurosis, but is taken as a specific construction in each analysis. Epistemological rupture step by Freud led to a different epistemology in that it gave birth to psychoanalysis as a new discourse. The seduction hypothesis is posited in sexual terms, or given a sexual meaning.
