num_pages: 308
description: In '81, J.M. Masson was fired from his position as Projects Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, shortly after suggesting in a talk in New Haven that a key theory Freud had developed in 1895 &amp; later repudiated--so-called seduction theory--may have been valid after all. This talk scandalized Freudian orthodoxy, as reported in Time, Newsweek &amp; The NYTimes. Here for the 1st time are the letters from Freud, long kept from public view, which stirred this controversy. On the basis of these letters &amp; other new information discovered at the Archives &amp; elsewhere in Europe, Masson has written a devastating, controversial expose of psychoanalytical origins. In 1895, Freud formulated what was perhaps his most profound theory: that emotional disturbances in adults stem from actual early traumatic experiences, the knowledge of which has been repressed. But he eventually renounced this theory in favor of a new view, that his women patients had fantasized their early memories of rape &amp; seduction--a view on which the whole budding science of psychoanalysis would be based. Masson makes available previously unpublished letters from Freud's closest friend, Wilhelm Fliess, which reveal that Freud had grave doubts about abandoning seduction theory. Masson discovered that not only had Freud read the contemporary literature documenting the high incidence of sexual abuse of children, he'd in all likelihood witnessed autopsies of children who had been raped &amp; murdered. That Freud abandoned his seduction theory was a failure of courage rather than a clinical or theoretical insight. Resultantly, most psychiatrists &amp; psychoanalysts have in effect been reluctant to trust patient memories, especially women's, about traumas of childhood. Like Freud, they see such traumata as fantasy rather than reality. This cover-up of the truth has poisoned the entire profession.
language: English
title: The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory
titlecomplete: The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory
characters: Sigmund Freud
genres: Social Science, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, Psychiatry, Psychology, Theory, History, Feminism
ratings_count: 119
places: Vienna
publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (NY)