The "Trauma model" and the "Seduction
model" are a frequent topic in contemporary psychoanalysis. Many works
have recently been devoted to their history, development, conceptual analysis,
and clinical applications. What makes the book written by Van Haute &
Geyskens worth reading is, first of all, a different perspective. Namely, they
address the issue from the standpoint of anthropology and devote the larger
part of the book to the scrutiny of Freud’s efforts at establishing a clinical
anthropology, and the other one to the subsequent reactions to this by Sandor
Ferenczi and Jean Laplanche.

The authors claim that "Freud appears to make
pathology the measure of what it means to be human in general" (p. xiv),
and that Freud’s clinical anthropology is built upon three fundaments: 1. the
primacy of sexuality (and its perverse origin); 2. the discontinuity between
the child’s world and the world of the adult; 3. the continuity between
normality and pathology. Throughout the book, they examine the changes in the
three authors’ theoretical positions and different roles these fundaments play
for each of them in various stages of the development of their respective
theories.

Historically,
Freud’s work began with his theory of the perverted, nongenital nature of
seduction. At that stage of development of his theory Freud maintained that
children are unable of experiencing sexuality, so that they become aware of the
acts done by a perverted adult through deferred action that occurs in puberty.

However, in 1898 Freud published what he
had already written to Fliess: " … in my experience, children are
capable of every psychical sexual activity, and many somatic sexual ones as
well" (in Van Haute & Geyskens, p. 18). This change in his
understanding made him renounce the seduction theory in favor of biological
sexuality and introduce phylogenetic models in psychoanalytic theory. That is
precisely, the authors claim, the moment when psychopathology was transformed
into a clinical anthropology. Freud gave up the search for specific etiologies
and tried to establish innate sexuality and organic repression as universal
human phenomena independent of division between pathology and normality.
Therefore, he claimed, "sexual disgust is not just a pathological symptom,
but must be considered as the first genuinely human affect" (in Van Haute
& Geyskens, p. 25).

In the second
chapter the authors discuss Freud’s revisions in later editions of "Three
Essays on the Theory of Sexuality." The most important one is that
"Freud tends to think of infantile sexuality according to the model of
adult sexuality" (p. 77). As the authors’ careful examination of the text
informs as, after the 1915 edition the fundaments of the theory were shaken:
since Freud conceived infantile sexuality as closely similar to the adult
sexuality, he was forced to introduce a distinction between normality and
pathology and to base sexuality upon the model of instincts.

Complete abandonment of the trauma theory
is best reflected in Freud’s claim that the sexual drive is independent from
its object. Henceforth, he conceived the stages of psychosexual development –
as well as the Oedipus complex – emphasizing their phylogenetic basis to such
an extent that he believed education could make no influence on them
whatsoever. So now "neurotic symptoms … represent the sexual activity of
the patient … (as a) translation of an entire series of repressed psychical
processes, wishes, and tendencies that are all connected to sexuality" (in
Van Haute & Geyskens, p. 53).

The remaining two chapters are devoted to
the works of Sandor Ferenczi and Jean Laplanche. The authors consider that
"the work of Ferenczi and Laplanche can be read as a critical answer to
this shift in Freud’s thinking" (p. 37). It is very unfortunate that these
two chapters, and especially the one on Ferenczi, are not equally long and
elaborated as those on Freud, since Ferenczi and Laplanche are becoming more
and more important and influential in contemporary psychoanalysis.

It is now generally accepted that
"Ferenczi restores seduction and trauma to the center of his theory of
neurosis" (p. 85). In his famous paper, Sandor Ferenczi claimed that the origin
of trauma is in the confusion of tongues between the child’s tenderness,
imagination and play, on the one hand, and the adult’s passion that the child
can experience as brutality, on the other hand. In Ferenczi’s thinking,
sexuality does not have a privileged position, and each act of an adult that
shows one "beyond oneself" can have a traumatic effect. Moreover, it
is sometimes the denial of the trauma by the environment that has the most
traumatic effect.

These theoretical innovations brought
changes in Ferenczi’s analytical technique. He was critical towards analytical
neutrality and concerned that "something in the psychoanalytic technique
itself turns analysis into the mere repetition of earlier traumatic
events" (p. 88). In his insistence that the analyst should admit his/her
constraints, instead of striving for omniscience, we can find the origins of
contemporary relational psychoanalysis.

But this approach threatened to turn
psychoanalysis into a "mere" psychopathology. Therefore, Ferenczi
considered trauma to be constitutive of human subjectivity, thus giving it an
anthropological importance.

That claim made by Ferenczi contains
traces of a Laplanche’s later generalized theory of trauma. Namely, Jean
Laplanche asserted general anthropological significance of trauma and saw an
intrinsically traumatic character in the confrontation of the child with adult
sexuality. The main reason for that is in its enigmatic character for the
observing child.

Starting with the critique of previous
conceptions, Laplanche claims that Freud is mistaken in believing that
sexuality is a process that develops from the inside out without any role of
the other but that of a mere catalyst. He also criticizes Ferenczi for his
belief that there is more than a gradual difference between the child and the
adult. The authors also discuss a detailed study of Laplanche’s interpretation
of Freud’s paper on Leonardo and the idea of the seduction by mother presented
in it. They conclude that the seduction Freud first considered inevitably
pathological later was understood as a general structure, with only a gradual
difference between normality and pathology.

In
his theory, Laplanche holds that the traumatic situation is the occasion when
the adult sends a message that the child is not yet prepared for
intellectually, corporeally, and affectively. Like Ferenczi, he thinks that it
is traumatizing not because it is sexual, but because it is enigmatic. A
message can be considered enigmatic when a child is not capable of deciphering
its meaning. In this way, Laplanche introduces a now widely used distinction
between what is symbolisable and what is enigmatic and he considers this
distinction the measure of the quantity of trauma. And, again like Ferenczi, he
considers trauma to be an inevitable, generalized human experience.

In conclusion, I think that the book by Van Haute
& Geyskens will be useful to readers interested in careful scrutiny of
Freud’s texts and in the history of psychoanalysis in general. The authors
managed to contextualize Freud’s theory in a wider frame of reference, which is
not a frequent case. The book has a very distant and implicit clinical
relevance, but the authors have never had such intentions. Therefore, its only
major flaw is that it is too short and does not do justice to the other two
authors, especially Ferenczi.

© 2005
Aleksandar Dimitrijevic

Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Categories: Psychoanalysis