Synonyms
Definition
The primal scene is defined as the witnessing by a child of the parental sexual act (Freud 1897).
Introduction
The first time that the term “primal scene” was used by Freud was in his 1897 letter to Fliess (Freud 1897). The idea that sexual memories experienced before they were able to be understood lead to trauma, however, was delineated by Freud as early as 1896. According to Freud, the emergence of such a memory during a later period of life “… produces a surplus of sexuality in the psyche which operates as an inhibition of thought and gives the memory and its consequences an obsessive character-uninhibitability” (Freud 1896).
One of the first clinical descriptions of the traumatic effect that the primal scene can have on a child is seen in the case study of Katharina in Studies on Hysteria. In this case, the young girl is suffering from anxiety attacks that started after observing sexual intercourse between...
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References
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Freud, S. (1897). Letter 61 from “extract from the Fliess papers”. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, volume I (1886–1899): Pre-psycho-analytic publications and unpublished drafts (pp. 247–248). London: Hogarth Press.
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Roelk, B., Stack, M. (2020). Primal Scene. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_618
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