Freud's Traumatic Memory: Reclaiming Seduction Theory and Revisiting Oedipus

2. Freud and French Forensic Medicine

38 Freud’sTraumaticMemory 3 8 TWO Freud and French Forensic Medicine In order to understand the development of Freud’s “seduction theory,” that repressed childhood sexual traumas sat at the base of hysterical symptom formation, it is useful to consider the postdoctoral work Freud completed with the leading lights of French forensic medicine during the late 1880s. While Freud’s interest in the work of Charcot has been relatively well discussed, research on Freud’s engagement with the work of his forensic colleagues has been much less incorporated into scholarly considerations of the development of the sexual trauma theory. Before we consider what became the central question about Freud in the 1980s and 1990s — why a theory that has become a standard tool for understanding trauma and treating traumatic psychological sequelae was cast aside by the man who first articulated it — it will be useful to consider the grounds upon which he first established it. Part of the answer lies in a close attention to the historical context in which Freud operated. Other critics have attributed Freud’s turn to character flaws or rank ambition. Whatever weight these factors may have, additional light on the problem is also shed by a consideration of historical circumstances. Once he returned to Vienna, Freud would attack a problem much larger than himself. Unlike his French colleagues, however, he found himself working in virtual isolation. Freud and French Forensic Medicine 39 In the autumn of 1885, Sigmund Freud traveled to Paris for additional studies at the end of his medical training. He remained there from October 3, 1885, to February 28, 1886.1 While attending the famous lectures of the chair of the “legal” (forensic) medicine department, Paul Brouardel, it is likely that Freud saw Brouardel perform autopsies on, among others, raped and murdered children in the Paris morgue. Brouardel was the recognized authority on such cases in France, and had documented hundreds of them by the time Freud came to study with him. Much later Freud would allude to the role played by Brouardel, along with Charcot, in linking sexuality and mental illness (Masson, 33). This suggests that Brouardel offered insights about the mental states of both children who survived sexual assault and their perpetrators. At some point Freud, despite his meager means, purchased the forensic medical literature from the Paris school authored by Brouardel and others, which forcefully and comprehensively documented physical and sexual attacks upon children in France by parents, teachers and others who provided care for them (37–40). Thus, Freud had reasons from outside his own practice as well as within it to be interested in the sadly well-attested phenomenon of the physical and sexual abuse of minor children by adults. More familiarly, Freud also watched Charcot proceed with extrinsic, externally observable manifestations of hysteria in live women patients and a wide variety of attendant symptoms. Charcot observed. Charcot hypnotized. But for him, the hysterical patient remained an object of study, not a speaking subject. He was interested in the manifestation of physical symptoms, but did not see patients as a source of information capable of contributing to an understanding of their etiology. Charcot remained content to attribute hysterical symptoms to heredity. This obviated the need to discuss or investigate any of the patient’s experiences. As Jose Brunner points out, Charcot also worked primarily on the poorest members of society; his authority compared to their low station reinforced his conclusions but did little to engage them as sources capable of giving insight or relevant information.2 What we are accustomed to knowing about Freud’s work at this point has to do with the discovery of the “talking cure.” Freud’s 40 Freud’sTraumaticMemory eventual breakthrough, some years after returning from France, was that he asked for and listened to his patients’ stories. At some point, Freud must have made a decision that something parallel to a medical history-taking might reveal salient information regarding the etiology of inorganic hysterical symptoms. He got his patients to reveal the painful facts to him — including facts they had repressed. As he listened to the growing numbers of his patients, following an inductive pattern of thought, he was able to connect their experience of early sexual traumas with their current symptoms. Since this is the point at which readers of Freud tend to separate into supporters and critics, let us consider for a moment what happened when Freud...