During the late 1890s, Freud suffered both professional isolation and personal crises. He had begun to analyze his own dreams, and after the death of his father in 1896, he initiated the practice of analyzing himself daily. Although his self-analysis was a lifetime labor, it was especially difficult for his during the late 1890s. During his period, Freud regarded himself as him own best patient. In August of 1897, he wrote to Fliess, “the chief patient I am preoccupied with is self…The analysis this more difficult than any other. It is, in fact what paralyzes my psychic strength ”. A second personal crisis was his realization that he was middle-aged and had yet to achieve the fame he so passionately desired. During this time he had suffered yet another disappointment in this attempt to make a major scientific contribution. Again he believed himself to be on the brink of an important breakthrough with his “discovery” that neuroses have their etiology in a child’s seduction by a partner. Freud likened this finding to the discovery of the source of the Nile. However, in 1897 he abandoned the seduction theory and once postpone the discovery that would propel him to greatness. Why did Freud abandon his once-treasured seduction theory? In a letter dated September 21, 1897, to Wilhelm Fliess, he gave four reasons why he could no longer believed in his seduction theory. First, he said, the seduction theory had not enable d him to successfully treat even a single patient. Second, a great number of father including his own , would have to be accused because hysteria was quite common even among Freud’s siblings. Third, Freud believed that the unconscious mind could probably not distinguish reality from fiction, Belief that later evolved into the Oedipus complex. And fourth, he found that the unconscious memories of advanced psychotic patients almost never revealed early childhood sexual
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