The Assault on Truth

The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory

Cover of the first edition
Author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Country United States
Language English
Subject Sigmund Freud
Published 1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 308 (1984 Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition)
343 (1998 Pocket books edition)
ISBN 978-0345452795

The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory is a 1984 book by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, in which Masson argues that Sigmund Freud deliberately suppressed his early hypothesis that hysteria is caused by sexual abuse during infancy. Masson reached this conclusion while he had access to some of Freud's unpublished letters as projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archives.[1] The Assault on Truth aroused massive publicity and controversy. Several reviewers found the work flawed, and it received condemnation from reviewers within the psychoanalytic profession. Some feminists endorsed Masson's conclusions, and The Assault on Truth has been blamed for accelerating the spread of the recovered memory movement.

Background

Masson had been "a favored son within influential North American psychoanalytic circles" before the book's publication, and it was his relationship with analyst Kurt R. Eissler that helped him become the projects director of the Freud Archives, where he was entrusted with publishing the authorized edition of the correspondence between Freud and Wilhelm Fliess. Masson aroused controversy after expounding "iconoclastic" theories about the origins of Freud's psychoanalytic theories in a paper delivered at a 1981 meeting of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society. The New York Times printed two articles detailing Masson's views, and an interview with him. Eissler fired Masson, who "retaliated with millon-dollar writs". Janet Malcolm published two long articles about the affair in The New Yorker, which were later issued as a book, In the Freud Archives.[2]

Summary

Masson argues that Sigmund Freud deliberately suppressed his early hypothesis that hysteria is caused by sexual abuse during infancy.[1]

Reception

The circumstances surrounding the book's publication, as well as the fact that there had been growing mistrust of psychoanalysis since the 1960s, especially among feminists, meant that The Assault on Truth received a mixed response, including "outspoken and enduring condemnation from reviewers within the psychoanalytic profession and their sympathizers." Negative comments about the book were made by several reviewers, including Anthony Storr.[2] Feminist Catharine MacKinnon, who found The Assault on Truth a revealing discussion of Freud, writes that, "Masson's book was more than iconoclastic; it threatened the ground on which psychoanalysis stands: more than Freud's credibility, women's lack of it."[3] A critical review of The Assault on Truth by philosopher Arnold Davidson appeared in the London Review of Books.[4] Author John Kerr writes that The Assault on Truth is "seriously flawed but was nonetheless useful in getting the topic of childhood sexual abuse back on the psychoanalytic agenda."[4] Author Allen Esterson writes that when Masson "created a stir by arguing...that Freud showed a failure of nerve by revising his claims and asserting that patients' reports of childhood seductions were mostly unconscious phantasies, of the reviewers, only Frank Cioffi appears to have pointed out that the supposed factual basis on which the controversy was played out was suspect".[5] Historian Roy Porter wrote that The Assault on Truth is "tendentious", but a necessary corrective to Ernest Jones' The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1953-1957).[6]

Author Richard Webster writes in Why Freud Was Wrong (1995) that The Assault on Truth aroused massive publicity and controversy, and has sometimes been endorsed by feminists. He considers the book similar to E. M. Thornton's The Freudian Fallacy in its hostility towards Freud and psychoanalysis. However, he believes that Masson retains a partly positive view of Freud. Webster writes that although Masson makes some contributions to the history of psychoanalysis, his central argument has not convinced either the psychoanalytic establishment or the majority of Freud's critics. Masson accepts that Freud formulated the seduction theory on the basis of memories of childhood seduction provided by his patients, an account disputed by scholars such as Frank Cioffi, Thornton, Han Israëls, and Morton Schatzman, who have pointed out that Freud's original account of his therapeutic methods suggests that this is not what occurred. Freud's seduction theory maintained that episodes of childhood seduction would have a pathological effect only if the victim had no conscious recollection of them, and the purpose of his therapeutic sessions was not to listen to freely offered recollections but to encourage his patients to discover or construct scenes of which they had no recollection. Webster blames Masson for accelerating the spread of the recovered memory movement by implying that most or all serious cases of neurosis are caused by child sexual abuse, that orthodox psychoanalysts were collectively engaged in a massive denial of this fact, and that an equally massive collective effort to retrieve painful memories of incest was required.[7] Masson rejects Webster's suggestion, stating that he had no interest in recovering memories.[8]

Professor of German Ritchie Robertson writes that Masson overstates the case against Freud.[9] Psychologist Louis Breger writes that while Masson correctly questions the orthodox account of the abandonment of the seduction theory, Masson's "speculations about why Freud made this shift are not persuasive." Breger believes that The Assault on Truth contains valuable information on the later life of Emma Eckstein.[10] Anthony Elliott writes that while The Assault on Truth became a best-seller, Masson seriously misrepresents Freud. Elliott argues that Masson's critique of Freud is "greviously flawed", since "Freud did not dispute his patients' accounts of actual seduction and sexual abuse", being concerned rather with "the complex, muddied way in which external events are suffused with fantasy and desire."[11] Literary critic Frederick Crews calls The Assault on Truth a melodramatic book that misrepresents "Freud's 'seduction' patients as self-aware incest victims rather than as the doubters that they remained".[12]

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Webster 2005. p. 23.
  2. 1 2 Porter 1996. pp. 278-279.
  3. ↑ MacKinnon 1986. pp. xii-xiv.
  4. 1 2 Kerr 2012. p. 583.
  5. ↑ Esterson 1993. p. 12.
  6. ↑ Porter 1989. p. 250.
  7. ↑ Webster 2005. pp. 22-23, 201-2, 515, 519.
  8. ↑ Masson 1998. pp. 320-21.
  9. ↑ Robertson 1999. p. x.
  10. ↑ Breger 2000. pp. 385-6.
  11. ↑ Elliott 2002. p. 18.
  12. ↑ Crews 2006. p. 155.

Bibliography

Books
  • Breger, Louis (2000). Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-31628-8. 
  • Crews, Frederick (2006). Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays. Emeryville, California: Shoemaker Hoard. ISBN 1-59376-101-5. 
  • Elliott, Anthony (2002). Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction. New York: Palgrave. ISBN 0-333-91912-2. 
  • Esterson, Allen (1993). Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8126-9231-4. 
  • Kerr, John (2012). A Dangerous Method. London: Atlantic Books. ISBN 9780857891785. 
  • MacKinnon, Catharine; Masson, Jeffrey (1986). A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 
  • Masson, Jeffrey (1998). The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-02571-6. 
  • Porter, Roy (1989). A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-79571-6. 
  • Porter, Roy (1996). Keddie, Nikki R., ed. Debating Gender, Debating Sexuality. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-4655-1. 
  • Robertson, Ritchie; Freud, Sigmund (1999). The Interpretation of Dreams. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-210049-1. 
  • Webster, Richard (2005). Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: The Orwell Press. ISBN 0-9515922-5-4. 
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