Real events revisited - Ann Scott

The idea of a "real event" has haunted much of recent feminism's engagement with psychoanalysis, for the psychoanalytic conception of fantasy is often perceived as being at odds with the real-life events which explain or inflect women's place in the culture. There have been Jeffrey Masson's and Alice Miller's widely publicized critiques of Freud's move away from the "seduction theory" of neurosis to the theory of the Oedipus complex, which put sexual fantasy at the fore of both personality formation and illness.;Far greater recognition of the extent of child abuse - beginning with Cleveland in 1987 - has caused heated debate and widespread social concern. More recently, the focus of the debate has swung to the adult woman, on the possibility of "false memories" of abuse. At the heart of the problem of sexual abuse lie questions about children's and adult's minds, about lying and denial, repression and memory, reality and fantasy. A re-evaluation of the concept of fantasy should be of interest in a wide range of fields, such as gender studies, cultural studies and the clinical community.