What does primal scene mean?

Definitions for primal scene
pri·mal scene

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word primal scene.

Wiktionary

  1. primal scenenoun

    In Freudian theory, the first time a child witnesses (and understands) its parents copulating.

  2. Etymology: Translating Urszene. Coined by Sigmund Freud in 1914.

Wikidata

  1. Primal scene

    In psychoanalysis, the primal scene is the initial witnessing by a child of a sex act, usually between the parents, that traumatizes the psychosexual development of that child. The scene witnessed may also occur between animals, and be displaced onto humans. Ned Lukacher has proposed using the term in literary criticism to refer to a kind of intertextuality in which the ability to interpret one text depends on the meaning of another text. The expression "primal scene" refers to the sight of sexual relations between the parents, as observed, constructed, and/or fantasized by the child and interpreted by the child as a scene of violence. The scene is not understood by the child, remaining enigmatic but at same time provoking sexual excitement. The term appeared for the first time in Freud's work apropos of the "Wolf Man" case, but the notion of a sexual memory experienced too early to have been translated into verbal images, and thus liable to return in the form of conversion symptoms or obsessions, was part of his thinking as early as 1896, as witness his letter of May 30 of that year to Wilhelm Fliess, where he evokes a "surplus of sexuality" that "impedes translation". Here we are already close to the model of the trauma and its "deferred" effect. The following year, in his letter to Fliess of May 2, Freud gave the approximate age when in his estimation children were liable to "hear things" that they would understand only "subsequently" as six or seven months. The subject of the child's witnessing parental coitus came up as well, albeit in an older child, with the case of "Katharina," in the Studies on Hysteria, and Freud evoked it yet again in The Interpretation of Dreams, with the fantasy of the young man who dreamed of watching his parents copulating during his life in the womb.

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Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of primal scene in Chaldean Numerology is: 4

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of primal scene in Pythagorean Numerology is: 7

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"primal scene." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/primal+scene>.

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