A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century [Hardcover]

J. Moussaieff Masson (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"The need to control and devalue women, and the denial of the reality of child sexual abuse are endemic flaws of male-dominated modern psychiatry, convincingly argues Masson," reported PW , calling this collection of articles, translated from 19th century European medical journals, "a powerful indictment."
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this shocking yet readable expose of 19th-century medical atrocities inflicted on women and children by male doctors, psychoanalyst Masson gathers nine articles from French and German medical journals. The articles document brutal treatment for masturbation, hysteria, and vaginismus as well as incidences of the so-called fabricated sexual abuse of "prematurely perverted" children. A caustic preface by feminist Mackinnon and Masson's reflections on pornography, ECT, and lobotomy thoroughly indict past and present perversions of male power. Masson's radical critique goes beyond his controversial Assault on Truth ( LJ 2/15/84). For larger psychiatric, women's, and child psychology collections.Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 199 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st edition (December 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374135010
• ISBN-13: 978-0374135010
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,134,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Masson has had at least four lives: first as a boy raised to become a "spiritual leader" (see his denunciation of such a life in My Father's Guru). While in the middle of his disillusion, he became a professor of Sanskrit at the University of Toronto. At the same time he trained to become a Freudian analyst. Upon graduation he became Projects Director of the Freud Archives, and was scheduled to move into Freud's house in London when fate intervened: Masson found documents which seemed to show that Freud was right in believing that many women had been sexually abused as children, and that he was wrong to give up this belief, perhaps impelled by societal displeasure at his discoveries. Saying this publicly turned Masson into a psychoanalytic pariah, and he gave up both his professorship and his analytic career to delve into the far more fascinating world of animal emotions. Two of his books, WHEN ELEPHANTS WEEP and DOGS NEVER LIE ABOUT LOVE, were New York Times best-sellers. He became vegetarian as a result of his research, and later, when he looked into the feelings of farm animals, he became even stricter, and no longer eats or uses any animal product (vegan). Harpercollins published his most recent book: THE DOG WHO COULDN'T STOP LOVING: HOW DOGS HAVE CAPTURED OUR HEARTS FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. He lives on a beach in New Zealand with his two sons, Ilan and Manu, and his German wife, Leila, a pediatrician who works with children on the autistic spectrum (using the bio-medical approach), Benjy, a golden lab, and three cats. They often travel to the States, Europe, and Australia. He is now fascinated in the "us/them" phenomenon, between humans but also between humans and animals.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Misceginistic Practice of Gynecology, December 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century (Hardcover)

There are few individuals as sensitive to suffering as Jeffrey Mousaieff Masson, fewer still with his literary talent; perhaps only he could have produced this book. A well-translated purview of the dark history and "origin" of gynecology as it is still practiced today ... a crime against women, rather than healthcare.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A book that did not fulfill its potential, March 26, 2010

By 

e. verrillo (williamsburg, ma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century (Paperback)

As far as critiques of Freudian psychology are concerned, nobody does it better than Jeffrey Masson. He has that rare combination of critical insight, a razor-sharp intellect, the nose of a bloodhound, and absolutely crystal clear writing. Everything to which he applies these skills is not only a pleasure to read, but a source of great enlightenment.

Unfortunately, there is very little of Masson in A Dark Science. The preface, by Catharine MacKinnon, concerns pornography, which is not the subject of this book. And the body, nine translated articles from 19th century publications, really should have been appendices to a text. So, what was missing? The text.

In the introduction (the only section actually written by Masson) he states that the purpose of the book was to provide the relevant historical background to Assault on Truth, Masson's controversial book about Freud's repudiation of the ill-named "Seduction Theory." In Assault on Truth, Masson makes the claim that the reason Freud backed away from his assertion that childhood sexual abuse was the underlying cause of hysteria, was that it was not an accepted notion of the times. What was accepted was that children lied, and that female "patients" who claimed to have been abused were merely fantasizing. Masson's argument was a good one, supported by ample research and a sound understanding of Freud's theories. Predictably, Masson's claim was immediately rejected. (Freud, it should be remembered, is a cult hero, whose reputation is not to be trifled with)

Undaunted by his expulsion from the psychological community, Masson rose to the task of supporting his claim with A Dark Science. Masson read literally thousands of articles written by prominent psychiatrists of Freud's generation. He also read hundreds of unexpurgated case histories of "hysterical" women. One would have thought that this wealth of research would have been reflected in the body of this book. In fact, it should have COMPRISED that body. Unfortunately, Masson dropped the ball by offering a few translated articles rather than the fruits of his research--namely, a history and critical analysis of not only these nine articles (which was missing, by the way), but of all the literature he examined. Now, that would have been a book worthy of Masson's prodigious talent!

If you would like to tackle this book, read Masson's introduction--like all of his writing, it is excellent. Then mine his bibliography. (Be sure to read Masson's other books--Final Analysis, Against Therapy and Assault on Truth, in that order.) Peter Breggin's works will give you a good basis for understanding the abuses that women, in particular, have suffered at the hands of psychiatrists.

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Look at "Medical" Views of Women, Children & Sexuality at the end of the 19th Century, November 10, 2011

By 

Windwolfess (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century (Hardcover)

This book is a well-documented compilation of scientific cases presented at major European Professional societies at the end of the 19th and the early beginning of the 20th centuries. The papers have all been excellently translated by the author with assistance of some others, and the translations are excellent. It is as if you are reading the papers in English; there is little hint that they were written in another tongue.

The focus of this book is on original source material that shows widely accepted "scientific" views on women, children and sexuality. It is clear that women and children are regarded as psychologically unreliable due to their gender, in the case of women, and their youth, in the case of children. The chapters convincingly document that the prevailing scientific and legal opinions of the day presumed that the physiological/sexual nature of being a woman made her prone to hysteria and likely to imagine all manner of sexual harassment and assaults as a result that were never to be believed if a male or a male medical doctor asserted otherwise. Sexual predation by doctors or other males of women and children was unlikely to be true as a result, and since it was untrue, it had to be due to the sexual differences. Fixing these "hysterical" conditions required "fixing" some aspect of a woman's sexuality, so forced removal of ovaries, genital surgery to reduce "stimulation", etc. were seen as rational cures. Claim that the good doctor raped you? Why, you must be insane, because your are prone to hysteria which is a form of sexual over-stimulation, so the cure is to cauterize the clitoris! When mothers try to press legal claims against men whom they have accused of sexually assaulting their daughters, they are always described as being too hasty to believe their child. I suspect that the real reason that these women were all too ready to press legal charges was that they had themselves been subjects of sexual predation when they were young, and found it quite easy to believe that the child was telling the truth.

It would be easy to dismiss this book, especially after reading the screed that masquerades as a forward by a rabidly feminist scholar, but the texts presented largely substantiate her views. I highly recommend reading this book if you are interested either in the specific area that is the book's focus, or if you have a more general interest in seeing how psychologists have from time immemorial come up with "scientific" theories that are mere masks of cultural prejudices and religious sentiments dressed up as objective facts.