The Day Freud Turned His Back on Us: A Reflection on the Betrayal That Still Echoes

There was a time when Sigmund Freud stood at the edge of a courageous truth. He glimpsed the raw, horrifying reality that so many survivors live with every single day: that incest is not rare, not imagined, not hysteria. It is real. And it destroys.

But then—he turned away.

Under pressure from a world that couldn’t bear to look its own sickness in the face, Freud abandoned what could have been one of the greatest revelations in psychological history. And in that retreat, he handed survivors over to silence, to shame, and to a century of disbelief.

The Seduction Theory: When Freud Almost Saw Us

In the late 1890s, Freud dared to name what no one else would: that many of his patients weren’t inventing stories—they were remembering them. Real memories. Real abuse. Often incestuous. Often from those they were told to love and trust.

He called it the Seduction Theory—a radical truth that pointed to childhood sexual abuse, not fantasy, as the root of much psychological suffering.

This theory was more than an academic breakthrough. It was a validation. It was a long-overdue recognition of voices that had been screaming in silence.

Imagine the courage it took for those early patients to speak the unspeakable. Imagine what it meant for a respected man of science to listen. For a moment, there was a sliver of light piercing through the darkness. A chance that healing could begin with the truth.

But light makes shadows, and society didn’t want to see what that light revealed. Fathers, brothers, uncles—the respectable men of the world—exposed as predators? It was too much.

The Retreat: Freud Chooses Theory Over Truth

The backlash was swift. The upper-class families Freud treated, the scientific community, the entire culture he lived in—none of them were ready to accept the reality of incest. So Freud retreated. He recanted.

In a letter to his confidant Wilhelm Fliess, dated September 21, 1897, Freud wrote:

“I no longer believe in my neurotica… I was so driven to confirm it… that I was prepared to accept whatever my patients told me.”

And just like that, the survivors became liars again. The abuse became fantasy. He created the Oedipus Complex, and in doing so, turned real memories of assault into supposed unconscious desires.

Let that sink in: the pain, terror, and fragmentation that these victims brought into his office were dismissed as internal conflicts, not external violations.

This wasn’t just a change in theory. It was a betrayal. A collusion with the very systems of power that protect abusers and punish truth-tellers.

The High Cost of Denial

Freud’s reversal didn’t just stay within the walls of his office or the pages of a journal. It seeped into the foundation of modern psychology. It spread through institutions, legal systems, and cultural narratives. For decades, therapists and courts leaned on his theories to invalidate survivor stories.

Children who bravely disclosed abuse were called liars. Women were labeled hysterical. Boys were accused of making things up. Entire lives were derailed because Freud could not hold the weight of the truth he had uncovered.

And yet, that truth refused to disappear.

It lived on in the bodies of survivors—in autoimmune disorders, in chronic fatigue, in dissociation, depression, and rage. It echoed in their relationships, in the shame that wouldn’t loosen its grip, in the nervous systems stuck in survival mode.

This is what happens when society chooses comfort over justice, theory over truth.

Voices That Refused to Be Silenced

Decades later, trauma experts began to lift the veil Freud had dropped.

Dr. Judith Herman, psychiatrist and author of Trauma and Recovery, exposed how Freud’s about-face served to erase survivor voices rather than disprove them. She wrote:

“The dominant psychological theories… succeeded not by proving the survivors wrong but by rendering them invisible.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, former director of the Freud Archives, went even further. In The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory, he revealed that Freud’s shift wasn’t just theoretical—it was a political act. A decision to prioritize his own reputation and career over the messy, inconvenient reality of sexual violence.

“Freud’s recantation represents the turning away from a psychology of trauma to one of fantasy… he chose the safety of theory over the danger of truth.”

And that decision still ripples through the lives of survivors today.

What Freud Left Behind

Let’s talk about the impact of this betrayal in real terms:

• Justice was delayed or denied for untold numbers of survivors whose testimonies were dismissed as fantasy.
• Generational cycles of abuse went unbroken, hidden beneath the weight of collective denial.
• The “false memory” panic of the 1980s and ’90s retraumatized thousands who were told their memories were implanted or imagined.
• Mental health care became a minefield for survivors, many of whom were retraumatized by professionals trained to doubt them.

Freud didn’t just abandon a theory. He abandoned us. He abandoned the very people whose stories could have transformed the field of psychology into a space for real healing.

The Body Keeps the Score

Today, we know better. Neuroscience, somatic psychology, and trauma-informed care validate what those early survivors knew in their bones: trauma is not fantasy. It is embodied. It lives in our cells. It disrupts our nervous systems, our relationships, our ability to trust, to sleep, to breathe.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s work in The Body Keeps the Score lays bare what Freud once glimpsed and then denied: trauma is not a story someone makes up. It is a lived, ongoing experience that changes everything.

And incest? Incest is one of the deepest wounds a human can carry. It cuts through the sacred bond of trust and twists love into something cruel. Survivors of incest don’t need to be analyzed; they need to be believed, protected, and supported.

Reclaiming the Truth Freud Abandoned

At Holey House, we believe in truth-telling as a form of liberation. We believe that what was once hidden must now be named. We believe in the power of survivors to reclaim their stories—and in doing so, reclaim their lives.

So what do we do now, standing in the rubble of Freud’s retreat?

We rise.

We:

• Reject outdated, patriarchal theories that pathologize survivors.
• Train mental health professionals in trauma-informed, survivor-centered care.
• Confront the cultural myths that still protect abusers.
• Hold space for grief, for rage, for the unspeakable truths that demand to be heard.
• Speak the truth that was once silenced: we were right all along.

This Is Personal

For those of us who have lived through incest, this is not abstract. It is not academic. It is embodied, spiritual, and cellular. It is the aching hole in the soul that longs to be seen.

I write this as someone who lived under the weight of secrets. Who felt the gaslight of professionals who doubted me. Who watched my truth dismissed because a man over a hundred years ago chose comfort over courage.

But I also write this as someone who has risen. Who has found purpose in the ashes. Who holds space for others to speak what was once unspeakable.

At Holey House, we don’t just name the trauma. We invite you to heal it. To walk through the fire of remembrance and come out on the other side radiant with truth.

We Are the Reckoning

Freud may have folded under the weight of societal expectation. But we won’t. We are the generation that says enough. We are the voices he tried to erase. We are the living proof that the truth cannot be buried forever.

So let the world remember this:

The survivors were never the problem. The silence was. The denial was. The systems built to protect the abusers were.

And now, we choose something different.

We choose truth.

We choose healing.

We choose each other.

Because the house may be holey, but it still stands. And from within its broken walls, a new story rises.