Sigmund Freud gjør helomvending i sin teori og nevrosenes opprinnelse. Han forklarer hvorfor i et brev til sin venn Fliess i Berlin.

Sigmund tror ikke lenger på sin egen lære om nevrosene. Dette skriver han om i et brev til sin Venn Fliess i Berlin. Han viser til teorien om at nevrose springer ut av seksuelle overgrep mot barn. Tanken om at fedrene vanligvis har skylden, har skapt en forferdelse som Freud knapt har kunnet forestille seg. Flere av hans egne søstre har hysteriske symptomer, så dersom hans egen nevroselære er korrekt, vil det si at hans egen far må ha vært en overgriper.

En stund har han godtatt en slik horrible tanke, og i et tidligere brev til Fliess har han kalt faren Jacob Freud «pervertert». Men nå er han ikke lenger så sikker. Og usikkerheten gjelder ikke bare hans egen far. Selve mengden av hysterikere motsier teorien hans, er han kommet frem til. For dersom den er riktig, må overgrep fra fedrenes side være så godt som universelt utbredt, «og en så utbredt perversjon er ikke særlig sannsynlig», skriver han. I stedet ser han for seg at pasientenes incestuøse avsløringer sannsynligvis er produkter av deres egen fantasi.

Om hundre år kommer Freud til å bli angrepet for denne vendingen av fagfeller (Alice Miller og Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson). De kommer til å mene at det som nå skjer, er at Freud kynisk oppgir sannheten om seksuelle overgrep, og at han ikke er motivert av ideer, men tvert imot av den store belastningen ved å bli avvist av kollegene i Wiens psykiatriske og nevrologiske selskap. Angriperne kommer i sin tur til å bli angrepet for kjetteri av det som etter hvert kommer til å bli den etablerte freudianismen.

Men Freud blir ikke  mer populær blant sine kolleger etter å ha revidert forførelsesteoerien enn han har vært før han forkynte den.

Freud forkaster heller ikke forførelsesteorien før han gjør nye oppdagelser som motbeviser den. I virkeligheten kommer han aldri til å forkaste den helt. Om tyve år kommer han til å vise til tre avgjørende faktorer for en nevroses opprinnelse og utvikling: observasjon av foreldres samleie, forførelse fra en voksens side, og trussel om kastrering.

Det Freud gjør denne høstmåneden i breet til vennen Fliess, er å er å legge fram en ny teori for å forklare de gamle observasjonene sine. Det gjør han ved å kommer frem til at psykiateren Krafft-Ebbing halvveis har hatt rett: Mange av Freuds pasienter har fortalt «eventyr». Men det Freud syns han skjønner nå, på en måte han mener Krafft-Ebbing ikke har forstått, er at det fins en sannhet i slike eventyr. De er kodete budskap fra underbevisstheten.

Etter hvert som Freud beveger seg videre fra psykiatrien til psykoanalysen, interesserer han seg mindre for konflikter mellom individene og mer for konflikter inni hvert enkelt individ. Selv om de fleste anklagene om incest som Freuds pasienter kommer med, er falske, er de likevel helt ekte uttrykk for spedbarnsseksualitet, som for Freud vil si seksuelt begjær hos spedbarn. Pasientene hans lyver altså ikke. For å lyve er en bevisst handling, hvilket fantasier ikke er. Freud benekter ikke først og fremst de seksuelle overgrepenes realitet, han erklærer snarere at det fins en annen realitet,nemlig det området av fantasier og konflikter som springer ut av id – et sted hvor de fremherskende bildene er aktive og seksuelle, og hvor den psykiske kraften er tydelig fallisk. Selv hos små barn.

Freud har beveget seg i denne retningen en god stund allerede.

Her er et utdrag fra Freuds brev fra Fliess i Berlin (her gjengitt i engelsk oversettelse -- originalen er på tysk):

"Dear Wilhelm,

Here I am again, since yesterday morning, refreshed, cheerful, impoverished, at present without work, and having settled in again, I am writing to you first.

And now I want to confide in you immediately the great secret that has been slowly dawning on me in the last few months. I no longer believe in my neurotica [theory of the neuroses]. This is probably not intelligible without an explanation; after all, you yourself found credible what I was able to tell you. So I will begin historically [and tell you] where the reasons for disbelief came from. The continual disappointment in my efforts to bring a single analysis to a real conclusion; the running away of people who for a period of time had been most gripped [by analysis]; the absence of the complete successes on which I had counted; the possibility of explaining to myself the partial successes in other ways, in the usual fashion -- this was the first group.

Then the surprise that in all cases, the father, not excluding my own, had to be accused of being perverse -- the realization of the unexpected frequency of hysteria, with precisely the same conditions prevailing in each, whereas surely such widespread perversions against children are not very probable.

The [incidence] of perversion would have to be immeasurably more frequent than the [resulting] hysteria because the illness, after all, occurs only where there has been an accumulation of events and there is a contributory factor that weakens the defense. T

hen, third, the certain insight that there are no indications of reality in the unconscious, so that one cannot distinguish between truth and fiction that has been cathected with affect. (Accordingly, there would remain the solution that the sexual fantasy invariably seizes upon the theme of the parents.)

Fourth, the consideration that in the most deep-reaching psychosis the unconscious memory does not break through, so that the secret of childhood experiences is not disclosed even in the most confused delirium. If one thus sees that the unconscious never overcomes the resistance of the conscious, the expectation that in treatment the opposite is bound to happen, to the point where the unconscious is completely tamed by the conscious, also diminishes.

I was so far influenced [by this] that I was ready to give up two things: the complete resolution of a neurosis and the certain knowledge of its etiology in childhood.

Now I have no idea of where I stand because I have not succeeded in gaining a theoretical understanding of repression and its interplay of forces. It seems once again arguable that only later experiences give the impetus to fantasies, which [then] hark back to childhood, and with this the factor of a hereditary disposition regains a sphere of influence from which I had made it my task to dislodge it -- in the interest of illuminating neurosis.

If I were depressed, confused, exhausted, such doubts would surely have to be interpreted as signs of weakness. Since I am in an opposite state, I must recognize them as the result of honest and vigorous intellectual work and must be proud that after going so deep I am still capable of such criticism. Can it be that this doubt merely represents an episode in the advance toward further insight?

It is strange, too, that no feeling of shame appeared -- for which, after all, there could well be occasion. Of course I shall not tell it in Dan, or speak of in Askelon, in the land of the Philistines, but in your eyes and my own, I have more the feeling of a victory than defeat (which is surely not right).

How nice that your letter has arrived just now! It induces me to advance a proposal with which I had intended to close. If during this lazy period I were to go to the Northwest Station on Saturday evening, I could be with you at noon on Sunday and then travel back the next night. Can you clear that day for an idyll for the two of us, interrupted by an idyll for three and three and a half [of us]? That is what I wanted to ask. Or do you have a dear guest in the house or something urgent to do elsewhere? Or, if I have to leave for home the same evening, which would then not be worthwhile, do the same conditions obtain if I go straight to the Northwest Station on Friday evening and stay with you one and a half days? I mean this week, of course.

Now to continue my letter. I vary Hamlet's saying, "To be in readiness": to be cheerful is everything! I could indeed feel quite discontent. The expectation of eternal fame was so beautiful, as was that of certain wealth, complete independence, travels, and lifting the children above the severe worries that robbed me of my youth. Everything depended upon whether or not hysteria would come out right. Now I can once again remain quiet and modest, go on worrying and saving.

A little story from my collection occurs to me: "Rebecca, take off your gown; you are no longer a bride." In spite of all this, I am in very good spirits and content that you feel a need to see me again similar to mine to see you.

There remains one small anxiety. What can I still understand of your matters? I am certainly incapable of critically evaluating them; I shall hardly be in a position to comprehend them, and the doubt that then sets in is not the product of intellectual work, like my doubt about my own matters, but is the result of mental inadequacy. It is easier for you; you can survey everything I bring and criticize it vigorously.

I have to add one more thing. In this collapse of everything valuable, the psychological alone has remained untouched. The dream [book] stands entirely secure and my beginnings of the metapsychological work have only grown in my estimation. It is a pity that one cannot make a living, for instance, on dream interpretation!

Martha came back with me to Vienna. Minna and the children are staying in the country another week. They have all been exceedingly well.

My pupil, Dr. Gattel, is something of a disappointment. Very gifted and clever, he must nevertheless, owing to his own nervousness and several unfavorable character traits, be classified as unpalatable.

How all of you are and whatever else is happening between heaven and earth, I hope -- anticipating your reply -- to hear soon in person.

Cordially your

Sigm.