The Assault on Truth
 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, who argues that Sigmund Freud deliberately suppressed his early hypothesis that hysteria is caused by sexual abuse during infancy, a conclusion that Masson reached while he had access to some of Freud's unpublished letters as projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archives.[1]
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 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]
Scholarly 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]
Richard Webster writes that The Assault on Truth aroused massive publicity and controversy, noting that while not explicitly feminist, it has sometimes been endorsed by feminists. He finds the book similar to E. M. Thornton's The Freudian Fallacy, finding both to be marked by hostility towards Freud and psychoanalysis. Yet he believes that The Assault on Truth retains a partly positive view of Freud, despite accusing him of lacking moral and intellectual courage. According to Webster, although it makes some contributions to the history of psychoanalysis, its central argument has failed to convince 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.[3]
Allen Esterson comments that when Masson "created a stir by arguing, in his book The Assault on Truth (1984), 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".[4]
The Assault on Truth has been credited by Webster with 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.[5] Masson rejects Webster's suggestion that he is to blame for the interest in recovered memories, writing in a postscript to a revised edition of the book that, "I should make it clear that my interest in writing The Assault on Truth had nothing to do with the recovery of memories. I was interested in the reality of sexual abuse, so the topic of recovered memories is not one I address in any depth in this book."[6]
Professor of German Ritchie Robertson believes that Masson overstates the case against Freud.[7] Literary critic Frederick Crews describes The Assault on Truth as a melodramatic book that misrepresents "Freud's 'seduction' patients as self-aware incest victims rather than as the doubters that they remained".[8]
See also
References
Footnotes
- ↑ Webster 2005. p. 23.
- 1 2 Porter 1996. pp. 278-279.
- ↑ Webster 2005. pp. 22-23, 201-2, 515.
- ↑ Esterson 1993. p. 12.
- ↑ Webster 2005. p. 519.
- ↑ Masson 1998. pp. 320-21.
- ↑ Robertson 1999. p. x.
- ↑ Crews 2006. p. 155.
Bibliography
- Books
- Crews, Frederick (2006). Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays. Emeryville, California: Shoemaker Hoard. ISBN 1-59376-101-5.
- Esterson, Allen (1993). Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8126-9231-4.
- 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 (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.