ABSTRACT
If one sees behavior as conflict, then one must postulate a struggle between Freud and his father. Jacob's death then releases Freud to make his great leap forward. But perhaps Freud relinquished the seduction theory because it was patently untenable. He did not easily discard it, his first claim to fame as the discoverer of psychoanalysis. If the premise was wrong, was the entire enterprise? Perhaps his father's death released him, in some way, to give up an impossible stance. The reversal, at least, promised complexity and uncertainty.
