how the Freud’s Seduction theory failed to identify the key facts of sexual abuse and how victims are suffering from these stereotypes

 how the Freud’s Seduction theory failed to identify the key facts of sexual abuse and how victims are suffering from these stereotypes

In the mid-1890s, Sigmund Freud came up with a theory on sexual abuse, which came to e known as Freud’s Seduction theory. The theory proposed that most of the victims of the childhood sexual abuse experienced fantasies about the rape cases happening to them due to hysteria. Freud had collected a lot of data from his patients in his clinic. He concluded that a lot of sexual cases reported were actually from the imaginary fantasies which the victims experienced. The theory saw support from many scholars, as many argued that hysteria to the infants results in unconscious and sexual abuse memories to them. Due to this, the infants will tend to relate the stories to sexual harassment, which never happened. However, Freud failed to clearly demonstrate that the information which the victims were saying was as a result of fantasies. He admitted that it was difficult to differentiate between the truth and fiction from the victims. Nevertheless, Freud’s theory has resulted in many traditional stereotypes leading to further suffering of the victims. This essay will discuss how the theory failed to identify the key facts of sexual abuse and how victims are suffering from these stereotypes. In other words, the theories have caused close-minded views about sexual abuse in society.

In the 20th century, there was a lot of development surrounding the infants’ sexual abuse resulting from Freud’s theories. A lot of developments saw the culpability of abusing the child be transferred from the offender to the child. That is, the father or the family members who have raped the child were not held liable for their actions. Offending mothers, who to some extent were the reason for sexual abuse of the child, were acquitted their charges and the blame passed to the child. The child-based aetiologies thus presumed that the child reporting the abuses were considered to be mentally ill or has biological sexual problem. The researchers further supported this theory by stating that the children who experience mental problems in their early stages of development normally experience sexually related problems. That is, the victims will tend to have abnormal desires and sexual behaviours, making them seek out the ways they will satisfy these desires. The researchers further indicated that these kinds of children would seek out sexual pleasure unconsciously. Thus, they will be very willing to accept and fail to resist all premature sexual advances made to them. The society saw such action being a normal sexual encounter rather than being an abusive encounter to the children. The children who have been sexually abused were thus denied their quest for justice in such a scenario.

The victims of sexual abuse could not even seek medical approval for their abuse. However, the medical sector had not developed a model that will see the victimized children have justice. The doctors mostly employed a disease model to establish whether the victims were sexually harassed. The medico-legal evidence was based on the fact that if the child was infected, then the child was victimized. However, this was for long never bored any positive results and thus it was unreliable to some extent. The main assumption was that, if the child did not get infected with any disease, then the child was not exposed to sexual abuse. Conversely, this is a pure denial of justice to the sexual abuse victims.

The current medical measures meant to help the sexually victimized children access justice stem from the old ideology. For example, the primary prevention program employed by various schools is based on prevention more than access to justice. That is, the program is tilted into making the victimized children more immune to the subsequent exposures of abuse. These programs have been termed to be non-productive by various researches done on the sectors of child abuse. The victim does not get justice from being prepared on how to face future abuses. The more appropriate approach would be adopting a model that will enable the child abuse victims to have concrete evidence on their quest for justice. Medic-legal evidence-based child abuse cases would be useful in courts as compared to pure witness accounts. Failure for the medical sector to have a model that is more reliable and effective in addressing child abuse is shaped partly by Freud’s theories.

The current medical interpretation provides a better understanding of the sexual abuse cases, but it fails to provide a fair conclusion. That is, it fails to give an understanding of how the interests of innocent victims will be addressed. It does not offer a better confrontation on the sexual buses and how they will be minimized. Lastly, the medical interpretation lacks various empirical findings which will be used in interpreting the sexual abuse to the children. The empirical findings will offer a concrete understanding of a model that can be used to reduce the cases of childhood sexual abuse.

Social interpretation

Freud’s theories on sexual abuse to the children presented a ghost that has haunted societies up to date. The denial of the sexual abuses has been approached an angle that is very close to his theory; however much different they may look. In the mid-20th century, the social interpretation of the sexual abuses was more leaned into killing the whole perception of that the sexual abuse on to children ever took place. There was a social view that if the child who has gone through sexual abuse had a normal upbringing, the consequences would not have a long term effect. That meant that the people and the authorities who should be concerned who the cases of the child sexual abuse never considered the reality of the facts which the victims disclosed. The victims ended up either giving up on seeking justice as they were blocked from taking necessary action.

Social interpretation of the sexual abuse of the children has been having a weakness of its own. The sexual abuse is socially represented to be an untouchable issue in society. That is, the people who are doing are the un-extraordinary in society and to the child’s environment. The perpetrators include family members, fathers and other acquaintances. The abuse occurs in the homes where the children are residing with these people who would turn to be perpetrators. Therefore, denial of sexual abuse is largely since the same people have been caring for and supporting the child. Thus, the possibility of such a scenario happening maybe of an ill motive to the child’s life. Therefore, the sexual abuse victims are looked down, and they receive little or no help toward getting justice. Failure to socially condemn the sexual actions leads to more prevalence of sexual abuse related cases towards children from the people who are supposed to look after them.

Additionally, there has been a social interpretation of sexual abuse, which leaned more on the authority in society. Since most of the people who are sexually abusing the children are adults family members, society assumes that they are untouchable due to their status in society. The social belief that fathers should not be questioned on their actions in the family. Thus, the victims are encouraged to accept the actions and not question their fathers. Such an interpretation is supported by the societal myth which accepts rape actions in society. The children who have experienced sexual abuse from their fathers and family members will be less intending to seek justice. Currently, a lot of issues which are surrounding sexual abuse to the children stem from this myth. For example, the sexual abuse victims take too long to open up about what they have gone through under their family members. The victims are reluctant, especially due to fear of being frustrated by opening up than having getting justice. That is, society will fail to take legal actions for the people who abused him/her. To some extent, the society points the finger to the victim other that he/she is maybe lying or taking advantage of a certain situation. It scares away the victims from opening up more than the act itself, thus choose to remain quiet. A study done has found out that it takes an average of 7 years for the victims to open up about their sexual abuses.

It is not a guarantee that all the victims of sexual abuse will open up about their sexual abuses. Due to this, the percentage of child sexual abuse has been the least among the cases reported under sexual abuse. According to Unicef, these cases consists only of one in eight of every case reported to the police department globally. Freud’s theories have been player for these scenarios in society. They provided more problems than the answers to tackling child sexual abuses in society. The cases which have made to the courtyards leave no precedence at all. That is, there is no evidence to convict the accused, thus making the cases leave no mark in history.

The society has also shown another weakness which seems to affect the trial of child sexual offenders. When the concerned authorities record the voices of the abused survivors, in most scenarios, they are called ‘forced narratives’. Thus, making it more difficult for the victims to get justice in the courts of law. Such backlash is very difficult for the victims to bear, and in most cases, they end up withdrawing their statements. Additionally, the reference of the sexual abuse victims as survivors instead of victims has had a lot of consequences to some extent. In this context, the survivor is the person who has overcome the memories of sexual harassment, and he/she is in charge of his life. The victim, on the other side, is the person who is yet to recover from the sexual abuse experiences. That is, the person is still experiencing the trauma and is still controlled by what happened. The society has largely leaned towards making everyone a survivor. In doing so, society fails to recognize that they only address one side of child sexual abuse. They address the victim’s soul and leave the justice part undone. In a broader sense, making all the sexual abuse victims be survivors, the offenders are left free, denying justice to the victims. Additionally, curbing the child sexual abuses in society is left unaddressed. In some way, this has led to the prevalence of actions such as child and sex trafficking around the world. It can be majorly be attributed to the fact that the focus is more on overcoming other than eliminating sexual assaults in society.

The society had a myth that proposed sexual abuses as a ‘cycle of abuses.’ The myth claimed that people who are committing sexual violence had undergone it in their childhood. The society viewed the violence as a kind of avenge that the people were doing from the previous injustices. Though there has not been any professional study conducted to prove this, a part of the society believes that this is the reason for a person committing a sexual offence. Currently, many communities in various parts of the world will tend to opt for out of court settlement for the sexual offences, especially the ones done to the children. They see sexual abuse as an act where both people are victims; thus, there is no need to traumatize them further. Such can be traced to Freud’s seduction theory. Justice is thus not done as the victim is forced to the belief that the matter has been settled according to law.

In conclusion, Freud’s theories have had a lot of consequences on the way sexual violence is addressed today. Most of the sexual victims choose to remain quiet and not disclose anything about the abuses. The society and medical interpretation of sexual violence have not proved anything different from the theories. That is, the victims are sometimes seen to be the offenders, especially the children. Children experiencing sexual abuse from their family members are, in many cases, seen to be mentally ill or suffering from severe sexual desires. The recorded evidence from sexual victims is most scenarios referred to as ‘enforced narratives’ which have ill motive behind them. Lastly, sexual and child trafficking around the world can well be traced to the application of Freud’s theories in modern societies.