Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok begin their Questions for Freud by identifying what they call "contradictions" internal to Freudian thought, the most important of which are the tension between individualist and universalist conceptions of dream symbolism, Freud's vacillation over the seduction theory, and the tendency of Freud and his followers to suppress challenges to psychoanalytic orthodoxy (which is particularly ironic in light of their liberatory aspirations). The authors then attempt to explain the presence of these contradictions by citing trauma in Freud's own childhood.