Seduction Trauma: Representation, Deferred Action, and Pathogenic Development

Abstract

Seduction trauma refers to a range of phenomena currently described under the rubric of child abuse. Freud elucidated the fantasy distortion and elaboration of traumatic experience and retained the importance of actual trauma. Psychic trauma is associated with the alteration of self and object representations and ensuing new identifications, e.g., with victim and aggressor. The “deferred action” of psychic trauma is an antiquated concept and psychic trauma has immediate effects as well as far reaching developmental consequences. Prior trauma predisposes to later traumatic vulnerability and to trauma linked to phase specific unconscious conflict. The pathogenesis of child sex abuse and the enactment of oedipal incest extends before and after the oedipal phase, is often associated with other forms of abuse, and has a history of pathogenic parent-child relationship.