My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion [Paperback]

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1998

Masson has written the astonishing "prequel" to his autobiographical last book, Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst. Masson tells of the guru Paul Brunton, who lived with Masson's family as he was growing up and who profoundly influenced Masson with claims to enormous spiritual power.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This autobiographical book by the editor of Sigmund Freud's letters to Wilhelm Fliess and the author of books on psychology tells the story of Masson's father's meeting with Paul Brunton in India in 1945 and of Jeffrey Masson's growing up with Brunton as a resident guru in the home of Masson's parents. He details various religious practices to curb sexual desire (temptation appears in the form of a woman suddenly hired as domestic help), Masson's grooming as Brunton's spiritual heir, and Masson's discoveries of Brunton's false pretensions to knowledge of Sanskrit and to spiritual power. The story is a fascinating account of the power of illusion in people's lives, documented by quotations from letters and journals. Masson recounts his experiences with humor and even affection for Brunton in spite of his disillusionment. Recommended for academic, seminary, and large public libraries.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Praise for MY FATHER’S GURU

“An uncompromising yet compassionate book . . . A coming-of-age memoir unlike any other.”
–The Toronto Star

“AN EXTRAORDINARY CAUTIONARY TALE …. about the enduring human impulse to imbue charismatic individuals with superhuman attributes.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Told with a mixture of humor and compassion. . . . Throughout this confessional book a grown man tells of an unusual, even weird childhood and the blind submission that consumed his family’s life.”
–ROBERT COLES
The New York Times Book Review

“My Father’s Guru is an interesting account of a warped upbringing made fascinating by the insight it provides into Masson’s adult life. He makes no excuses: in initially revering Freud and other authority figures, Masson realizes he was seeking new and better gurus that Brunton–and was fated to reject them pitilessly when they showed themselves, like Brunton, to be merely human.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Beneath the guru-bashing, the book is Masson’s poignant and loving indictment of his parents, worth reading for his psychological portrait of coming-of-age disillusionment.”
–Seattle Weekly --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671025732
• ISBN-13: 978-0671025731
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,821,850 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

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Honest look at the De-volution of Spiritual Arrogance, November 3, 2001

By 

C. J. Hardman (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion (Paperback)

Jeffrey Masson recounts his experiences growing up with a family under the direction of self-appointed Guru and misdirected(-ing?) "Eastern Star" Paul Brunton. Masson makes no attempt to hide the illusions he and his parents and sister were held by, telling how "P.B." (Paul Brunton) was able to hold sway over his impressionable if well to do and world traveled, educated parents while himself undergoing no scrutiny. Indeed, I found this book to be a blueprint for many families that have chosen to drop everything, and seek "spiritual improvement" from an outside source. It seems so much easier sometimes to get all of the answers from the source, a teacher or minister, rather than be truely introspective and fix the very real personality problems and faults we all have.

Masson unflinchingly includes excerpts from his younger years, when he was convinced he was on a higher spiritual plane than most of his fellow beings. The arrogance and naivete of his youth is humorous if somewhat worrisome, though we find that he is gifted with a humble introspection that allowed him to outgrow the worst of these. He also explains how over the years through his own education he came to find that most of Brunton's teachings were manufactured or misquoted, the man he'd once so admired didn't know the difference between Sanskrit and Hindi, and certainly was confused as to the texts he supposedly had mastered. Perhaps most interesting, Masson documents his years at Harvard when he has the opportunity to meet other "spiritual" minds in the orientalist religious movements, and discover that supposedly great spiritual men like Alan Watts and Edward Conze were hardly above treating their own families with disregard and cruelty (see page 160). Slowly Masson comes to take critical account of what the "spiritual masters" around him, including family guru Paul Brunton, lack--compassion and a base in reality is traded for the freedom of power over others. Paul Brunton is humiliatingly debunked by the newly savvy Masson upon his return from college--a lesson in developing critical thinking skills and overcoming pithy know-it-all canned "spiritualism" for all of us, written in a thoughtful and reflective manner. Why after all, do the "spiritually developed" so crave the "Maya" of worldly recognition and devotion? Masson is critical too of his old self, and closes on a gentle note.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Debunking Paul Brunton, May 1, 2001

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion (Paperback)

Amazing story of a family subjagated by the pseudo guru Paul Brunton. I remember that after reading "A Secret Search in India" and "A Secret Search in Egypt" I was somehow fascinated by Paul Brunton and his tellings. But they were so unbelievable, that I droped him. In the present book Brunton is exposed as a total fraud. The autobiography about the childhood of Masson unfolds step by step how his family became involved and enslaved by Brunton. Althrough as a reader one may ask why such a dependency on such a betrayer may have been possible, it is still so that many people who are save from cults are prone to become victim to this one-person-cult kind of cult. It is shown in detail, how Brunton established his position of someone beeing advanced, close to the final goal of life. Then they had to follow his advices to get there, too. It also did then not matter, that other people thought it was all crap. They were just underdeveloped. Not everyone could understand and accept, that Brunton came from Sirius. Bruntons case is all too strange, but he found disciples, nevertheless. The book also contains Masson's way out of this missery. The absurdities of Bruntons teachings, further information from other teachers, also the confusions after the wrong third world war prediction and finally university saved Masson's mental life. The book is an easy reader, and one delves deep into the authors inner mental workings.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars growing up and learning your parents are human, April 10, 2001

By 

henry - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion (Paperback)

I have to say that I liked this book a great deal. Perhaps it was because I was exposed as a young adult to many of these odd ideas that Paul Brunton had. There is a large subculture that believes all of that stuff to this day. I have to wonder what it is about that that is so appealing to some people. Is it because it seems romantic that there are "perfect" masters sneaking around secretly keeping us all going? That Tibet and the ET's are engineering our society? Anyway, Masson writes very well about becoming disallusioned with his parents and Paul Brunton. He describes the thrill of growing up with a demigod (because that was what Brunton hinted that he was)and the romance of being in on these secrets. And the gradual dawning of knowledge. One of the best parts of the book is Dr. Masson's ultimate acceptance of PB as a friend and companion. It is too bad that PB felt that he had to be so much more.