 Front cover of the 1984 Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition | |
| Author | Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Psychology |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | 1984 |
| Publication place | United States of America |
The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory is a 1984 book by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. It argues that Freud deliberately suppressed his early hypothesis that hysteria is caused by sexual abuse during infancy, a conclusion that Masson reached while he had access to some of Freud's unpublished letters as projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archive. Richard Webster writes that while not explicitly feminist, the book has sometimes been endorsed by feminists, and has much more than passing significance. Webster compares the book to E. M. Thornton's The Freudian Fallacy, and notes that both are marked by hostility towards Freud and psychoanalysis; he describes The Assault on Truth as "an attack on Freud's integrity which effectively accuses him of lacking both moral and intellectual courage", albeit one that retains a partly positive view of Freud.[1]
Webster comments that The Assault on Truth aroused "massive publicity and controversy". Yet according to Webster, while The Assault on Truth makes "some interesting contributions to the history of psychoanalysis", its central argument has failed to convince either the psychoanalytic establishment or the majority of Freud's critics. Masson accepts that Freud formulated the seduction theory on the basis of memories of childhood seduction provided by his patients, an account disputed by scholars such as Frank Cioffi, Thornton, Han Israëls, and Morton Schatzman, who have pointed out that Freud's original account of his therapeutic methods suggests that this is not what occured. Freud's seduction theory maintained that episodes of childhood seduction would have a pathological effect only if the victim had no conscious recollection of them, and the purpose of his therapeutic sessions was not to listen to freely offered recollections but to encourage his patients to discover or construct scenes of which they had no recollection.[1]
Webster writes that The Assault on Truth helped accelerate the spread of the recovered memory movement by implying that all, or nearly all, serious cases of neurosis are caused by child sexual abuse, that orthodox psychoanalysts were collectively engaged in a massive denial of this fact, and that a massive collective effort to retrieve painful memories of incest was required.[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b c Webster, Richard (2005). Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: The Orwell Press. pp. 22–23, 515, 201–202, 519. ISBN 0951592254.