ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the shocking revelation that patients suffering from hysteria were sexually abused during childhood and the provocative explanatory hypothesis that the symptoms of hysteria are consequences of this abuse. Some scholars maintain that Freud never denied the high incidence of sexual abuse of children and was troubled by it throughout his life; others maintain that Freud's handling of this matter calls into question his personal and scientific integrity. By positing psychic reality, Freud supplies real events for psychoanalytic interpretations to correspond to and a way out of the either-it-happened-or-it-did not dilemma. Freud regards the family romance as a childhood fantasy that becomes a prime component of psychic reality. The chapter Freud's theory of original fantasies, Jean Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis characterize these fantasies. Laplanche and Pontalis claim that original fantasies take the form of skeletal, impersonal, present-tense scenarios, and they urge that this form facilitates psychological assimilation of these fantasies.
