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The ASSAULT ON TRUTH: FREUD'S SUPPRESSION OF THE SEDUCTION THEORY

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If you have managed to work through the various reviews of this book, you are likely becoming aware that there must be something fairly controversial surrounding the nature of its subject matter. Masson was for a time, the curator of the Freud archives, and thus had access to many as yet unpublished, publicly sealed, or previously censored letters Freud wrote to friends. He also had access to Freud's personal copies of the important books and academic papers of the time. If anything, the level of scholarship involved in preparing this book goes beyond the simply impressive.

So...what's all the fuss ? After all, this book is over 20 years old now.

In a word : The seemingly never ending and often inexplicably volatile controversy surrounding adult memories of childhood sexual abuse. In April 1896 a young and knowingly courageous Freud read a paper before his colleges in Vienna setting forth in detail the then revolutionary position that such traumatic events actually took place, that they were common, and that they were at the root of later serious mental heath problems. This contention was enough to cause him to be almost instantaneously ostracized by every respected psychiatric luminary of the day. A generation later, one of his best friends and students made the same contentions, and suffered the same fate. As the nature of our own authors investigations became clear, he was fired from his position as curator of the Freud archives.

Freud himself then went on to abandon his contentions, and in a move which uncannily mirrors some current positions on the subject, changed his views a the stance in which all such adult memories were attributed to psychological fantasy or if from children, outright or manipulative lies.

A true page-turner, and absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in the quixotic history and professional politics surrounding the mental health professions' strange and ongoing internal struggle with the established reality of childhood sexual abuse and its potential influence on later life.

I just loved this book when I first read it several years ago. Freuds early notion that hysteria was caused by repressed memories of sexual abuse (known as the seduction theory) made so much more sense than his later notion that hysteria was caused by repressed memories of incestuous desires. Only later, when hearing that many therapists were carelessly implanting false memories of sexual abuse in their patients and that they had drawn inspiration for this type of therapy from Masson, did I look more closely at what he had written. What I found was enlightening.

For example, in describing Freuds approach toward his patients at the time of the seduction theory, Masson (1984) claimed that Freud listened and understood and gave them permission to remember and speak of these terrible events (p. 9). Compare this to how Freud really described his therapy around that time:

The work keeps on coming to a stop and they keep on maintaining that this time nothing has occurred to them. We must not believe what they say, we must always assume, and tell them, too, that they have kept something back because they thought it unimportant or found it distressing. We must insist on this, we must repeat the pressure and represent ourselves as infallible, till at last we are really told something. (from Studies on Hysteria).

Obviously, Freud did a bit more than just listen and understand and give them permission to remember and speak. Consider too, Massons claim in the postscript to the present edition that we do not at present possess, and probably never will, enough documentary evidence of how, precisely, Freud conducted his therapy in the early days, say between 1895 and 1900 (p. 321). Examine then the following passage from a letter written by Freud to a colleague in 1896:

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She is suffering from eczema around her mouth and from lesions that do not heal in the corners of her mouth. During the night her saliva periodically accumulates, after which the lesions appear. In childhood (12 years) her speech inhibitions appeared for the first time when, with a full mouth, she was fleeing from a woman teacher. Her father has a similarly explosive speech, as though his mouth were full.

Habemus papum! [We have a Pope!  equivalent to Eureka!]

When I thrust the explanation at her [that her father had sexually abused her], she was at first won over; then she committed the folly of questioning the old man himself, who at the very first intimation exclaimed indignantly, Are you implying that I was the one? and swore a holy oath to his innocence.

She is now in the throes of the most vehement resistance, claims to believe him, but attests to her identification with him by having become dishonest and swearing false oaths. I have threatened to send her away and in the process convinced myself that she has already gained a good deal of certainty which she is reluctant to acknowledge.

She has never felt as well as on the day when I made the disclosure to her. In order to facilitate the work, I am hoping she will feel miserable again.

The pain in her leg appears to have come from her mother. (from Masson, J. M. [Ed. & Trans.]. 1985, The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fleiss, 1887-1904. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 220-221)

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This letter is the most explicit example we have of Freuds obviously coercive approach to uncovering memories of sexual abuse in his early patients. (Interestingly, it was written following publication of an article in which Freud argued that he was unable to force false memories on his patients.) Yet Masson, who is clearly aware of this letters existence since he edited the book in which it was first published, never discusses it. Small wonder, since it effectively undermines his entire thesis about the kinder, gentler Freud who once helped his patients cope with memories of sexual abuse.

As for Massons brief review of recent evidence confirming the validity of recovered memories, it is not nearly so clearcut as he would have you believe. In other words, as with the rest of the book, the level of scholarship leaves much to be desired.

This book is both very plausible and very misleading. The original documents show that, contrary to the traditional story of the seduction theory, the patients in question did not tell Freud they had been sexually abused by their fathers. Freud used symbolic interpretation of patients' symptoms -- which he took to "correspond to the sensory content of the infantile [sexual] scenes" -- to reconstruct supposed childhood incidents, and employed a coercive procedure (the "pressure technique") to try to induce his patients to "reproduce" the supposed "scenes" from their unconscious. In 1896 he wrote that "before they come for analysis the patients know nothing about these [sexual] scenes. They are indignant as a rule if we warn them such scenes are going to emerge. Only the strongest compulsion of the treatment can induce them to embark on a reproduction of them." He also wrote that the patients "have no feeling of remembering the scenes" and "assure me emphatically of their unbelief". In other words, it was Freud himself who, on the basis of preconceived theory, was convinced that his patients (including six men) had experienced sexual molestation, and his patients who were unbelieving! In his Postscript to the 1998 edition Masson claims that the Fliess correspondence indicates that Freud had both patients who recovered memories of abuse in therapy and those who had always remembered the abuse. In fact in the reports to Fliess in the period in question there is only one unequivocal case of the latter. Moreover, Freud himself contradicts Masson's claim: "With our patients, those memories [of childhood molestation] are never conscious ... only so long as, and in so far as, they are unconscious are they able to create and maintain hysterical symptoms." Astonishingly, Masson has failed to appreciate that the whole point of the seduction theory was that the supposed memories had to be unconscious if they were to be pathogenic. Again, the two supposed instances of objective corroboration of sexual abuse in early childhood have been shown not to stand up to close scrutiny by elementary standards of evidence. And in regard to Masson's reassuring words about Freud's having explicitly addressed the issue of forcing the "sexual scenes" on his patients, as with the story that Freud was ostracized by his colleagues (refuted by historians of science Ellenberger and Sulloway) Masson is a credulous victim of Freud's renowned persuasive rhetoric.

Jeffrey Masson is a national treasure. I read this book in 1984 and I don't know why this book hasn't revolutionized the world's thinking about Freud and child abuse, but especially of Freud. Masson clearly lays out his argument against the validity of the Oedipus complex as a viable scientific concept. It is a quick, insightful and intelligent read for those interested in the subject of child abuse, and I hope that Masson resumes writing on this topic.

Jeffrey Massons "Assault on Truth" is probably one of the most important books of the 20th century. He shows in detail how Freud betrayed his female patients and how he finally ended up in denying the evidence of the widespread existence of child sexual abuse. Massons book is a forceful attack against the freudian movement, who even today build their whole theory about child sexuality and the oedipus complex on Freuds betrayal in 1897. But it is also a good refutation of these witness psychologists who today falsely claims that Freud implanted false memories of sexual abuse in his patients. For everyone interested in topics such as the foundation of psychoanalysis or the debate about child sexual abuse - just read it!

Masson's book must be read because it makes possible the following unified conception of his theories of dreams and psychoanalysis.

Freud initially interpreted dreams by likening them to daydreams and psychotic hallucinations and had no theory. The daydreams of mentally healthy persons are wish fulfillments as any healthy person knows from personal experience. Psychotic hallucinations are either external attributions of failures or imaginary successes that are unrealistic and even irrational and can be considered such wish fulfillments. But there is no basis for assuming that dreams too mean wish fulfillments.

In order to fit the meaning of a dream into the wish theory, Freud used the idea of disguising through the operations of inversion and displacement. For example, when a dream said "closed," he was able to interpret it as meaning "open." He also assumed basely that all past events that the dreamer could remember in the waking state through associations of ideas with the dream images were part of the dream thoughts. Evidently, using arbitrarily such a wealth of material and the operations of inversion and displacement any event can be interpreted in any way one wishes. These facts alone make Freud's theory of dreams untenable.

Freud spent five years to write his book on dreams because in the first four years he could not find a theoretical basis for his wish fulfillment hypothesis and his idea of disguising. The following events took place in Freud's life during those five years, as can be learned from Masson's book.

Freud was unable to cure his hysterical patient Emma, as usual. On February 20, 1895, he allowed his friend Fliess to perform a surgical operation on her nose to cure her (!?). Because of excessive bleeding that nearly killed her following the operation, a second operation was performed by another surgeon, and meter-long gauze was removed from her nose, which was accidentally left there by Fliess. But Emma's bleeding continued. On April 21, 1896, Freud delivered his lecture The Etiology of Hysteria, according to which this disorder is caused by being seduced and abused in childhood.

On April 26 the same year he wrote to Fliess. "Her episodes of bleeding were hysterical, were occasioned by longing." On May 4 he wrote: "She became restless during the night because of an unconscious wish to entice me to go there, and since I did not come, she renewed the bleeding , as an unfailing means of rearousing my affection." June 4: "Her hemorrhages were due to wishes." They were undoubtedly caused by the faulty surgical operation since they began after the operation. She may have consciously or semi-consciously welcomed the bleeding if she really longed to see Freud, but there is no reason for assuming that her unconscious caused the self-harming behavior just to see Freud. His thinking was wishful: it served to feed his ego and to hide his failure to cure her.

Freud's father died in October 1896, and he began his self-analysis in the summer of 1897. He discovered that he had been sexually abused in his childhood; thereupon he developed hysterical symptoms and wrote about them to Fliess. Consequently, he switched from the seduction theory of hysteria to its fantasy theory, according to which this disorder is caused by repressed unacceptable sexual wishes. In his famous letter to Fliess dated September 1, 1897, he explained why he made this change. None of the reasons that he mentioned in that letter has any scientific value; they are rather related to his personal psychological and professional needs. He also thought that lying to hysterical patients about the cause of their illness was the only means of helping them.

It appears that Freud conceived the fantasy theory of hysteria and based the whole psychoanalytic theory on it by integrating his baseless and wishful interpretation of Emma's hemorrhages with his baseless wish fulfillment theory of dreams, for he wrote to Fliess on January 3, 1899: "The key to hysteria really lies in dreams. I understand now why, in spite of all my efforts, I was unable to finish the dream book." On February 19, 1899 he wrote: "It is not only dreams that are fulfillments of wishes, but hysterical attacks as well. This is true of hysterical symptoms, but it probably applies to every product of neurosis." He published The Interpretation of Dreams in September 1899. This is how Freud's theories of dreams and neurosis were born together out of his baseless assumptions and wishful thinking. Freud firmly believed that his dream theory was correct but was not so sure about his fantasy theory, or psychoanalytic theory, of mental disorders, and even knew that it was wrong.

One of the arguments Freud used in his dream book in support of his wish fulfillment theory is that the mind can do nothing but fulfilling wishes. Consequently, he interpreted everything in a dream as meaning wish fulfillment by associating to the dream all sorts of event that are in reality unrelated to the dream, and using the operations of inversion and displacement. What he failed to see is that although the function of the mind can be said to fulfill wishes, i.e., to satisfy needs, it produces plenty of preparatory thoughts that serve to fulfill wishes but are not wish fulfillments themselves, and that such thoughts can be found in dreams. For example, to fulfill a wish, or to terminate the failure to do it, consciously in the waking state, one has to think (a)what the failure exactly is,(b)why it is not fulfilled, and b)how it can be fulfilled. The first two thoughts are not wish fulfillments but are useful in finding how wish fulfillment can be realized. The third thought can look like imaginary wish fulfillment, as Jung called Freud's theory of dreams, but in reality it is more functional than imaginary wish fulfillment.

If dreams are not imaginary wish fulfillments, Freud's fantasy theory of mental disorders is even less tenable than he thought.

See:

Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.
Loker's Cognitive-Behavioral Cybernetics of Symptoms, Dreams, Lateralization: Theory, Interpretation, Therapy.

I read this book a few years back and LOVED it. Then it was destroyed in a flood we had just after that. I tried to get another copy but couldn't find it anywhere, then was told it was out of print!

I now have a new copy of the reprinted edition! It is a wonderful psychology book that made me have a far better understanding of Freud and where he was coming from. I now feel so irritated with people who make blanket statements about Freud and how he was "a moron" or some other non-meaningful phrase.

This is an excellent book about the history of child abuse. A must read for anyone interested in the subject.

Freud never disavowed the seduction theory; he put it on the back burner due to the reaction of male Viennese society at the time (after all, which father wants to believe others may think he is molesting his daughters, or that it is as widespread as Freud seemed to be saying?)

Freud's only error with the seduction theory was in believing that ALL neuroses stem from childhood sexual abuse. He did modify it later to say he does believe that SOME neuroses stem from it. Going from believing that ALL mental problems stem from sexual abuse to saying SOME of it does is hardly turning his back on his own theory!

A Note on Janet Malcolm: as evidenced in this book, Ms Malcolm actually creates composite quotations and with reference to her interviewing the author prior to initial publication, perhaps for the ensuing monetary gain she knew would thus be open to her, misrepresented (by altering the record of) the dialogue between author-interviewer prior to this book's initial release. Jeffrey Masson filed a libel suit against Janet Malcolm and The New Yorker (who published this journalist's two part article based on interviewing Masson, in 1984) and upon the matter's issues of honesty in quotation (Malcolm's of Masson) reaching the U.S. Supreme Court and then the Ninth circuit Court of Appeals, Jeffrey Masson won the case, but, curiously, the jury was deadlocked on damages. When a second trial took place -- this time without the New Yorker -- even more curiously perhaps, he lost. The facts and actuality of what occurred in regards this "unacceptable journalistic technique" are laid bare in this book, Malcolm's two-part article having appeared before the book's first release: setting the tone for the reviews it's author would receive, and in doing so, both misleading the public, and giving very upset and shaken reviewers the metaphorical ammunition they would need: to describe the author and ignore the contents of the book, to set Janet Malcolm up for life, and allow those in power (psychotherapists, psychiatrists), somewhat traumatised it seems evident, to side with Malcolm --a mutually lucrative enterprise serving also to deny the reader the truth. Just to finish on that, before I get started with my review, although I cannot speak for the person who placed the review prior to this when they describe a "moron", to clear confusion, I believe the individual being referred to is surnamed Webster.

I second the that reviewer's assertion: the history of psychical phenomena (including by Sigm. Freud), and especially this very book, has been consistently misunderstood, most often and most critically by those (and they are mostly "professionals" of one persuasion or another) who have something to gain (i.e. something to fear). It certainly seems those persons who have assertively misunderstood have done so deliberately, whether it be consciously, or unconsciously, or a blend of both.

The author doesn't intend to set out to invalidate the Oedipus complex, but to demonstrate the irrefutable suppression of the Seduction theory, and attempt to illuminate this act's historical significance on the later development of classical psychoanalysis.

Contrast this with the morally controversial but truthfully essential behaviour of certain "jaded" individuals: I am referring to a proposed forthcoming book the publication of which is being held over the head of the Library of Congress presently, in order to see they derestrict the Freud Archives in a "real, complete, and total" fashion: through demonstrating the subject of Sigmund Freud's aliquis ("paradigm") analysis of a case of unconsciously motivated forgetting (a parapraxis, Freudian slip) is none other than Freud himself. The Archives are now about 90% derestricted. Though Freud's cowardice has, since September 21, 1897, caused incalculable suffering to innumerable individuals by the depravity of psychotherapy and its power-/dominance-hungry practitioners, let's take a look at the man himself, for that's really all he was: just a man. Let us let ourselves learn more about him personally, his personal anguish and torment, rather than be so hasty in blaming Sigmund for the twentieth century's abuse of his personal, nineteenth century terror -- if we can do this, and dare to read this book, along with the author's others, dare to go against the tide, and stand up to form our own, individual opinion, some of us not so hungry to control the behaviour of another, may be in for a very pleasant surprise. After all, it is people increasingly trying to control people, that is precisely what is stripping us of our individuality: something Freud, despite his many serious flaws and prior to his abandonment of the seduction theory, had never wished for.

Do we not all dream at night? I agree both hold their own validity, particular to their own context.

Psychotherapy may be a deeply morally flawed practice (made so by the qualities of those people through this century who had shaped it, i.e. they were morally flawed, and carried Sigm.'s post-abandonment legacy), and Psychiatry equally as horrifically morally flawed (since Freud's 1913 alliance with a Dr. Eugene Bleuler, of the state "mental hospital" in Zurich, who had been using "techniques" derived from classical psychoanalytic theory there, and wrote Freud to inform him), but Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson wrote this book of truth, and he is also the man responsible for his books subsequent to this one, the writing of which he seems to have been led to by the unearthing of these actual atrocities. Tracing this influence in a personal way, I have also bought "When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals", co-authored by Susan McCarthy.

I extend on the suggestion this is not a book to avoid: the author's later ones aren't either.

If Jeffrey Masson can learn that we, as fallible human beings cannot heal our own sorrows and heartache, maybe we can too.

"Free and honest retrieval of painful memories cannot occur in the face of skepticism and fear of the truth. If the analyst is frightened of the real history of his own science, he will never be able to face the past of any of his patients...The time has come to cease from hiding from what is, after all, one of the great issues of human history."

Jeffery Moussaieff Masson
THE ASSAULT ON TRUTH
From the Conclusion

In the wake of the cultural shifts going on regarding our awareness of childhood trauma and sexual abuse throughout Western civilization--history and present day--one could easily be led to believe, particularly if you are not into psychology, that a book of this nature is not nearly as relevant as it might have been twenty years ago. I felt that when I saw it advertised and even read someone's review about it almost a year ago, and didn't buy it until recently. Now, after finishing it and being floored, I am reminded of one of Shopenhauer's famous maxims: there are three stage of an emerging truth; first it is ridiculed or ignored, second it is violently opposed...

...and third, it is accepted as self-evident.

The genius that is Freud's and his contribution to World civilization is clearly evident, but it is wrapped up and to a large degree tainted by the cult of the Oedipal complex he created at the dawn of the last century. Make no mistake, Jeffrety Masson proves that a comparison of Freud to Jim Jones or even Hitler is equally as valid as a comparison of him to Darwin, Galileo or Christ. He had a great deal invested in a scientific myth--and its secret, propagandistic granting of moral amnesty to the bourgeois Viennese scientific community and corrupt, secretly horrific aspects of its society. And with that foundational myth (that supported a power structure that has since been one of the most influential in the world: psychoanalysis), he took part in the prevention of the achievement of mental health that has indirectly shaped many of the horrors of the twentieth century.

When one looks into the past with the revisionist eyes of a society that is now aware--somewhat--of the destructive power of culture-sanctioned child abuse, you look at the growth of Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism, and the biographies of the men who led these revolts--specifically their childhoods...you look at the products of laissez faire capitalism and colonialism--that which itself produced the plantation slave trade and created the foundational myth of racial supremacy in America...you look at the worldwide international businesses of illegal drugs and forced prostitution--the consumers and producers of which are mostly abused children themselves...

...you look at how a courageous look at the role of child abuse on the human psyche creates personality--which creates public policy and nations--and how it could have prevented some or all of this from occuring, and instead of saying "Wow! Freud, you genius, what have you done..."

You say "Freud, my God, what have you done?"

This book is frightening.