SEDUCTION

The "scene of seduction" connotes attempts at seduction, real or fantasied, in the form of advances, incitations, manipulations, or suggestions that are actively initiated by an adult vis-à-vis a child who is passive, even frightened.

The "theory of seduction" was a metapsychological model worked out by Sigmund Freud between 1895 and 1897 and then abandoned; it assigned an etiological role in the production of psychoneuroses to memories of actual seduction attempts. In 1893, bolstered by the accounts given him by his patients, Freud spoke of seduction as a clinical discovery. During the period 1895-1897, based on these clinical observations, he worked out a theory designed to explain the repression of infantile sexuality. On September 21, 1897, in a well-known letter to Wilhelm Fliess, he laid out his reasons for abandoning this model (1950a, pp. 259-260). This whole episode is eminently instructive from an epistemological as from a heuristic point of view, and is worth reviewing.

On May 30, 1893, Freud wrote to Fliess: "I believe I understand the anxiety neuroses of young people who must be regarded as virgins with no history of sexual abuse" (1950c, p. 73). This was his first allusion to the role of sexual seduction, still very broad in its application. In "Draft H," dated January 24, 1895, he presented the following narrative: "He had called her up to the bed, and, when she unsuspectingly obeyed, put his penis in her hand. There had been no sequel to the scene, and soon afterwards the stranger had gone off. In the course of the next few years the sister who had had this experience fell ill. . . . I endeavored to cure her tendency to paranoia by trying to reinstate the memory of the scene. I failed in this. . . . She wished not to reminded of it and consequently intentionally repressed it. . . . She had probably really been excited by what she had seen and by its memory.... The judgment about her had been transposed outwards: people were saying what otherwise she would have said to herself" (1950a, pp. 207-209). Here then we have seduction, repression, and the foreshadowing of rejection, or what would much later be called foreclosure. On October 15, 1895, Freud wrote enthusiastically to Fliess: "Have I revealed the great clinical secret to you, either in writing or by word of mouth? Hysteria is the consequence of a presexual sexual shock. Obsessional neurosis is the consequence of a presexual sexual pleasure later transformed into guilt. 'Presexual' means before puberty, before the production of the sexual substance; the relevant events become effective only as memories " (1895c, p. 127). On May 30, 1896, he distinguished the periods of life in which the event occurred from those in which repression came into play (1950a, pp. 229-231); and on May 2, 1897, with reference to fantasies in hysteria, he elaborated: "all their material is, of course, genuine. They are protective structures, sublimations of the facts, embellishments of them, and at the same time serve for self-exoneration. Their precipitating origin is perhaps from masturbation fantasies" (p. 247). The references to "structures," "embellishments," and "fantasies" indicate clearly that Freud was becoming increasingly dubious. In "Draft L," an attachment to this last-cited letter, he went on: "The aim seems to be to arrive [back] at the primal scenes. In a few cases this is achieved directly, but in others only by a roundabout path, via phantasies. For phantasies are psychical façades constructed in order to bar the way to these memories. Phantasies at the same time serve the trend towards refining the memories, towards sublimating them" (p. 248). Truth to tell, the great revision was already under way.

In the famous letter to Fliess of September 21, 1897, Freud wrote: "I will confide in you at once the great secret that has been slowly dawning on me in the last few months. I no longer believe in my neurotica. This is probably not intelligible without an explanation. . . . Then came surprise at the fact that in every case the father, not excluding my own [a phrase long censored by successive editors of the Freud-Fliess papers], had to be blamed as a pervert . . . though such a widespread extent of perversity towards children is, after all, not very probable" (p. 259). Freud now realized that scenes of seduction could be the product of reconstructions in fantasy whose purpose was to conceal the child's autoerotic activity. This was a historic moment in the shaping of psychoanalysis, rich in lessons about Freud's creative functioning and typical of the tendency of his innovative thinking to be overtaken by its own development, often changing course when faced by contrary evidence but always anchored in clinical experience. Freud's self-analysis, undertaken in the preceding months, following the death of his father, certainly made it possible for him to carry through this radical break, to approach the discovery of the Oedipus complex, and eventually to reject his seduction hypothesis as false. Much later, in 1924, he would write the following in a footnote to his "Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence" (1896b): "At that time I was not yet able to distinguish between my patients' phantasies about their childhood years and their real recollections. As a result, I attributed to the aetiological factor of seduction a significance and universality which it did not possess. When this error had been overcome, it became possible to obtain an insight into the spontaneous manifestations of the sexuality of children which I described in my Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d)" (p. 168n). A return to clinical observation was thus mandatory, and Freud had no theoretical alternative in the end but to assign seduction to the category of those primal fantasies whose origin he ascribed to the prehistory of humanity.

In the first Freudian clinical doctrine, the child at birth was naïve, innocent, and when confronted by the sexuality of the other perceived it as external, foreign, and strange: this was the context of the seduction theory; in Freud's second clinical doctrine, the child was acknowledged to be the "polymorphously perverse," inherent possessor of a primitive sexuality, destined to unfold in its interactions with its human surround. But while, historically speaking, infantile sexuality thus replaced seduction (scene and theory), it never obliterated it completely, and both clinical views continued to be discernible within psychoanalytic treatment, as Freud himself frequently pointed out from the Three Essays to the Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940a [1938]).

Henri Sztulman

See also: Amnesia; Character neurosis; Childhood; Deferred action; Fantasy; General theory of seduction; "Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses; Memories; Mnemic symbol; Primal fantasies; Hysteria; Introjection; Libido; Narcissism; Neurotica ; Seduction scenes; Trauma.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1896b). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence. SE, 3: 157-185.

——. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.

——. (1925d [1924]). An autobiographical study. SE, 20: 1-74.

—— (1940a [1938]). An outline of psycho-analysis. SE, 23: 139-207.

——. (1950a [1887-1902]). Extracts from the Fliess papers. SE, 1: 173-280.

——. (1950c [1895]). Project for a scientific psychology. SE, 1: 281-387.

Le Goues, Gérard, and Roger Perron (Eds.). (1996). Scènes originaires. Monographs of the Revue française de psychanalyse. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Further Reading

Blum, Harold. (1996). Seduction trauma: representation, deferred action, pathogenic development. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 44, 1147-1164.

Eissler, Kurt R. (1993). Erroneous interpretations of Freud's seduction theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 41, 571-584.

579. Seduction (See also Flirtatiousness.)

1. Armida modern Circe; sorceress who seduces Rinaldo. [Ital. Lit.: Jerusalem Delivered ]
2. Aurelius Dorigen’s nobleminded would-be seducer. [Br. Lit.: Canterbury Tales, “The Franklin’s Tale”]
3. Bathsheba Uriah’s wife, seduced by King David. [O.T.: II Samuel 11:4]
4. Circe enchantress who turned Odysseus’s men into swine; byword for irresistibly fascinating woman. [Gk. Lit.: Odyssey ; Rom. Lit.: Aeneid ]
5. Delilah fascinating and deceitful mistress of Samson. [O.T.: Judges 16]
6. Dragon Lady beautiful Chinese temptress. [Comics: “Terry and the Pirates” in Horn, 653]
7. Europa seduced by Zeus in form of a white bull. [Gk. Myth.: Kravitz, 96]
8. Harlowe, Clarissa seduced and raped by Lovelace. [Br. Lit.: Richardson Clarissa Harlowe in Benét, 203]
9. Hautdesert, Lady de tries to seduce Gawain to test his faithfulness. [Br. Lit.: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ]
10. Io seduced by Jupiter in form of a cloud. [Rom. Myth.: Metamorphoses ]
11. Juan, Don handsome Spanish lad seduces many women. [Eur. legend: Benét, 279]
12. Leucosia, Ligeia, and Parthenope sirens; tried to lure Odysseus and his men to destruction. [Gk. Lit.: Odyssey ]
13. Little Em’ly though engaged to Ham, is seduced and runs off with Steerforth. [Br. Lit.: Dickens David Copperfield ]
14. Lorelei siren; lured ships to destruction with singing. [Ger. Folklore: Benét, 599]
15. Mirandolina innkeeper artfully seduces misogynist for sport. [Ital. Lit.: The Mistress of the Inn ]
16. Rustico convinces Alibech that the way to serve God is by sexual intercourse. [Ital. Lit.: Boccaccio Decameron ]
17. Sorrel, Hetty seduced by Arthur Donnithorne. [Br. Lit.: Adam Bede ]

Selfishness (See CONCEIT, STINGINESS .)

SEDUCTION

The act by which a man entices a woman to have unlawful sexual relations with him by means of persuasions, solicitations, promises, or bribes without the use of physical force or violence.

At common law, a woman did not ordinarily have the right to sue on her own behalf; the right to sue for seduction belonged to a father who could bring an action against a man who had sexual relations with his daughter. A woman who was seduced by a marriage promise could sue for breach of promise, and if she became sexually involved with a man due to force or duress, she might be able to sue for rape or assault. Regardless of whether the woman was a legal adult or an infant, seduction was considered to be an injury to her father.

Seduction suits are rarely brought in modern times and have been eliminated by some states, primarily because they publicize the victim's humiliation.

cross-references

Breach of Marriage Promise.

se·duc·tion / siˈdəkshən/ • n. the action of seducing someone: if seduction doesn't work, she can play on his sympathy | she was planning a seduction. ∎  (often seductions) a tempting or attractive thing: the seductions of the mainland.

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resurrection, retrospection, section, selection, subjection, transection, vivisection •exemption, pre-emption, redemption •abstention, apprehension, ascension, attention, circumvention, comprehension, condescension, contention, contravention, convention, declension, detention, dimension, dissension, extension, gentian, hypertension, hypotension, intention, intervention, invention, mention, misapprehension, obtention, pension, prehension, prevention, recension, retention, subvention, supervention, suspension, tension •conception, contraception, deception, exception, inception, interception, misconception, perception, reception •Übermenschen • subsection •ablation, aeration, agnation, Alsatian, Amerasian, Asian, aviation, cetacean, citation, conation, creation, Croatian, crustacean, curation, Dalmatian, delation, dilation, donation, duration, elation, fixation, Galatian, gyration, Haitian, halation, Horatian, ideation, illation, lavation, legation, libation, location, lunation, mutation, natation, nation, negation, notation, nutation, oblation, oration, ovation, potation, relation, rogation, rotation, Sarmatian, sedation, Serbo-Croatian, station, taxation, Thracian, vacation, vexation, vocation, zonation •accretion, Capetian, completion, concretion, deletion, depletion, Diocletian, excretion, Grecian, Helvetian, repletion, Rhodesian, secretion, suppletion, Tahitian, venetian •academician, addition, aesthetician (US esthetician), ambition, audition, beautician, clinician, coition, cosmetician, diagnostician, dialectician, dietitian, Domitian, edition, electrician, emission, fission, fruition, Hermitian, ignition, linguistician, logician, magician, mathematician, Mauritian, mechanician, metaphysician, mission, monition, mortician, munition, musician, obstetrician, omission, optician, paediatrician (US pediatrician), patrician, petition, Phoenician, physician, politician, position, rhetorician, sedition, statistician, suspicion, tactician, technician, theoretician, Titian, tuition, volition •addiction, affliction, benediction, constriction, conviction, crucifixion, depiction, dereliction, diction, eviction, fiction, friction, infliction, interdiction, jurisdiction, malediction, restriction, transfixion, valediction •distinction, extinction, intinction •ascription, circumscription, conscription, decryption, description, Egyptian, encryption, inscription, misdescription, prescription, subscription, superscription, transcription •proscription •concoction, decoction •adoption, option •abortion, apportion, caution, contortion, distortion, extortion, portion, proportion, retortion, torsion •auction •absorption, sorption •commotion, devotion, emotion, groschen, Laotian, locomotion, lotion, motion, notion, Nova Scotian, ocean, potion, promotion •ablution, absolution, allocution, attribution, circumlocution, circumvolution, Confucian, constitution, contribution, convolution, counter-revolution, destitution, dilution, diminution, distribution, electrocution, elocution, evolution, execution, institution, interlocution, irresolution, Lilliputian, locution, perlocution, persecution, pollution, prosecution, prostitution, restitution, retribution, Rosicrucian, solution, substitution, volution •cushion • resumption • München •pincushion •Belorussian, Prussian, Russian •abduction, conduction, construction, deduction, destruction, eduction, effluxion, induction, instruction, introduction, misconstruction, obstruction, production, reduction, ruction, seduction, suction, underproduction •avulsion, compulsion, convulsion, emulsion, expulsion, impulsion, propulsion, repulsion, revulsion •assumption, consumption, gumption, presumption •luncheon, scuncheon, truncheon •compunction, conjunction, dysfunction, expunction, function, junction, malfunction, multifunction, unction •abruption, corruption, disruption, eruption, interruption •T-junction • liposuction •animadversion, aspersion, assertion, aversion, Cistercian, coercion, conversion, desertion, disconcertion, dispersion, diversion, emersion, excursion, exertion, extroversion, immersion, incursion, insertion, interspersion, introversion, Persian, perversion, submersion, subversion, tertian, version •excerption