ABSTRACT
Freud’s early psychoanalytic theories were based on his observations that the hysterical symptoms of his adult female patients could be traced to childhood experiences of seduction at the hands of nurses, maids, adult strangers, siblings, and adult family members. In “The Etiology of Hysteria” (1896, 1952, p. 203). Freud stated, “I put foreward the thesis that at the bottom of every case of hysteria there are one or more occurrences of premature sexual experiences, belonging to the earliest years of childhood, which can be reproduced through the work of psychoanalysis in spite of the intervening decades.” Freud’s psychoanalytic treatment of these patients consisted of establishing a linkage between the hysterical symptoms and the childhood sexual experiences through the uncovering of repressed memories. Therefore, psychoanalysis was originally a “trauma” theory.
