Volume 31, Number 6 · April 12, 1984
A Case of Hysteria
By Charles Rycroft
The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory
by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 308 pp., $16.95
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is, or perhaps rather was, a psychoanalyst—at present he is not, one gathers, a member of any psychoanalytical organization, does not see patients, and does not teach psychoanalysis anywhere. His book is a contribution to the early history of psychoanalysis, or rather would have been if he had not elected to present it in the form of a polemical attack on Freud, and on Freud's literary executors, notably Anna Freud, Ernest Jones, and K.R. Eissler. Its title is, indeed, in a most peculiar way a misnomer, since Masson attacks Freud not for assaulting truth but for retreating from it, and the assault described is Masson's on Freud, whom he accuses of cowardice, on his literary executors, whom he accuses of suppressio veri, and on contemporary analysts, whom he accuses of ignoring the real violence inflicted on children.
Review, 3494 words
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