Dear Colleagues, Chers Collègues, liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen,

EPF 40th Annual Conference March 19th & 20th 2027 Sevilla, Spain
‘Seduction – Verführung – Séduction – Seducción’

We are delighted to invite you to the 40th EPF Annual Conference, where we are awaited not only by the warming spring sun during the orange blossom season, but also by one of the largest and most beautiful historic cities in Europe – Sevilla.

The concept that came to be known as ‘seduction theory’ represents a significant and controversial turning point in the shaping of psychoanalysis, with consequences that continue to resonate today. Within early Freudian clinical theory, a distinction can be drawn between ‘seduction’ and ‘seduction theory’: these two terms have had different fates over the course of the history of psychoanalysis – first within Freud's own work, and later within post-Freudian theory-building, notably by Jean Laplanche.

By ‘seduction,’ Freud referred to a scene in which a child passively suffers a sexual approach by an adult. Occasionally Freud speaks not of seduction but of ‘abuse’ or ‘sexual trauma.’ In the texts that preceded the postulate of seduction theory, however, the discussion in the late 1880s had always been only of ‘trauma’ or ‘psychical trauma.’ Around 1895, this was specified as ‘sexual trauma’ (Freud, 1896, p. 163).

Real insight into the extent of these sexual traumas reported by Freud's patients can be gained through a close reading of Freud's letters to Fliess between 1895 and 1897 (Freud, 1985). The brutality of the scenes that Freud recounts in these publications was subsequently completely concealed in his official publications. Why? Based on the material communicated by his patients, Freud identifies the seducer at various points in his correspondence with Fliess as the ‘perverse father,’ and accordingly speaks at one point of a ‘paternal aetiology’ (Freud 1985, 237), and at another of a ‘father aetiology’ (Freud, 1985c, 286; cf. Hock, 2010).

Freud himself never used, either in his writings or in his letters, the term ‘seduction theory’. Rather, it became a ‘theory’ insofar as it is regarded as the decisive causal factor in hysteria.

Two key aspects of this early seduction theory deserve to be highlighted, as they have lost none of their significance.

1. Seduction theory operates according to the principle of après coup (Nachträglichkeit). Accordingly, the sexually traumatic experience occurs in two distinct phases. The ‘premature sexual experience’ initially remains unprocessed, since the child lacks their capacity to integrate it into their psychic apparatus; it lodges itself, as it were, as an internal foreign body. Only retrospectively does this experience become traumatic, when, in the course of sexual maturation, a second experience triggers – through an associative link – the memory of the first, thereby endowing it with a new, traumatic meaning.
2. The child experiences the seduction scene as passive in a twofold sense: they are not only situationally passive – caught unprepared, simply enduring what happens as an ‘attack’. The child is also constitutionally passive, lacking entirely the psychic means to respond in any way to adult sexuality; hence the traumatic impact of the scenes of seduction.

It is important to note that ‘seduction’ and ‘seduction theory’ had different trajectories within Freud's own work. While Freud continued to emphasise, until the end, the significance of seduction in child development and thus also of infantile sexuality, he abandoned his own seduction theory in the autumn of 1897. The decisive moment is documented in the letter to Fliess of 21 September 1897 (‘I no longer believe in my neurotica…’). Freud’s letters to Fliess are indispensable for anyone wishing to trace the evolution of Freudian ‘seduction theory’ 120 years on.

Freud’s texts on the history of psychoanalysis (1914, 1925), highlight what he considered to be his early theory. In these writings he lays down the foundations followed by the vast majority of post-Freudian analysts, across all schools. By abandoning seduction theory as a universal phenomenon in the aetiology of hysteria, he argues, the value of unconscious fantasies come to light; and only by positioning these fantasies closely with the Oedipus complex (as the nucleus of the neurosis), was psychoanalysis able to establish its fundamental theoretical principle.

Despite the continued value of fantasy and the centrality of psychic reality in psychoanalysis, the actual sexual abuse of children by adults and the reality of incest cannot be overlooked.

While abandoning his theory of the ‘Neurotica’ in 1897, by 1916 Freud acknowledged both the importance of the fantasy of being seduced as well as ‘the real memories’ of seduction (1916-17). Traumas are either experienced in the subject’s body or as sense perceptions, mostly of something seen and heard, i.e ‘experiences or impressions’ (Freud, 1939).

Jean Laplanche’s ground-breaking critique of Freud’s seduction theory as ‘restricted’ led to the evolution of his ‘general seduction theory’ (Laplanche, 2016 [1987]). Of the numerous revisions he made to Freud's original theory, only the most important shall be highlighted here. For Laplanche, the adult Other no longer confronts the small child with conscious genital sexuality, but rather with their own polymorphously perverse infantile sexuality, which they themselves have repressed. Thus, the adult’s repressed infantile sexuality is conveyed to the child, through ‘enigmatic messages’, which overwhelms and confuses the young child’s undeveloped psyche.

In the course of his reassessment and, indeed, overhaul of Freudian seduction theory, Laplanche also paid particular attention to Ferenczi's essay ‘Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child’ (1933). Ferenczi’s line of thought was originally rejected by Freud as a theoretical regression back to the superseded seduction theory. Laplanche’s revisions contributed to its renaissance and inaugurated yet another layer of the controversy. Laplanche’s formulations rely on Freud’s later hypothesis that the mother is the original seducer of the infant. Might there also be a potential dialogue between Laplanche’s ‘general theory’ and Winnicott’s emphasis on the centrality of the mother in early psychic development? For example, is the good-enough mother also seductive? There are many other theories that focus on the mother as a desiring woman whose sexuality affects the infant (cf. M. Fain; De M’Uzan; P. Aulagnier).

The scientific work of the EPF cannot ignore psychoanalytic controversies and divergences in post-Freudian theory. How far has psychoanalysis evolved today in addressing the ongoing and ubiquitous traumatic suffering of children and vulnerable people precisely because of the reality of the ‘confusion of tongues’? How do we listen to our patients’ narratives and convictions about their subjective experiences?

We invite you to join us in exploring these questions on the concept of seduction, and, with the Spanish psychoanalytical Societies, to welcoming you to the Hotel Barceló Sevilla Renacimiento on the 19th & 20th March 2027.

Jan Abram, EPF President

Udo Hock, EPF Vice President

Nergis Güleç, EPF General Secretary

 

For the Argument References, click here

 

For additional information on registration, submissions, venue, hotels, and programme, you are welcome to visit the website of our professional organising partner here

 

Pre-Conference 17th – 18th March 2027
Main Conference 19th – 20th March 2027

More information will follow soon.

 

CALL FOR NEW AUTHORS

Individual Papers Sevilla 2027

5.00 – 6.30 pm on Friday 19th March and Saturday 20th March, 2027

The Individual Paper Section offers an opportunity for new authors to present their clinical/metapsychological work to an EPF audience with the possibility of it being published on the EPF website.

The IP Section is open to:

New authors who are IPA members
Newly qualified analysts
New authors to the IP Section

The paper should be between 4,000 and 6,000 words and relate directly to the theme of the conference argument on the EPF website.

The main argument (up to 200 words), should be outlined in the Abstract. References must be included at the end of the paper according to the EPF Style Guide – see here

ALL CLINICAL MATERIAL MUST BE DISGUISED FOLLOWING THE EPF PUBLICATION POLICY – see here

Please send your paper in full with the title, author’s name and society, and the Abstract at the beginning of the paper.

Submissions should be received not later than November 30th 2026. You will receive the outcome of your submission at the beginning of January 2027.

PLEASE NOTE:

Submissions can only be accepted through the submission system. Please upload your submission here: (the link to the submission system will be available soon)

EPF registration tradition

All participants of the EPF Annual Conference are expected to register and pay the appropriate fee for the full conference. The only exceptions to this tradition are the Plenary Speakers, Board Directors and special invited guests for the Round Table.

All speakers and participants should be IPA members and/or candidates. Guests, who should be recommended by an IPA analyst, are also welcome as long as they are bound by a code of ethics related to psychoanalytical clinical work.

This registration tradition is based on the aims and objectives of the Annual Conference since the first EPF’s conference in 1976: to offer a forum for European psychoanalysts to gather together for psychoanalytic scientific discourse in an atmosphere of collaboration and tolerance regarding different theoretical psychoanalytic perspectives and the advancement of psychoanalysis.

We trust that all participants will appreciate the spirit of this esteemed tradition and see their registration fee as a contribution to the continuity and expansion of psychoanalysis in Europe in the best interests of all psychoanalytic societies of the Federation.

Thank you for your consideration.

EPF Board of Directors

 

For additional information on registration, submissions, venue, hotels, and programme, you are welcome to visit the website of our professional organising partner here