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