Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

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Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born 1941) was a Sanskrit specialist who trained as a psychoanalyst in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. During his training, he became close friends with the distinguished psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler, and later became acquainted with Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's daughter, both members of the psychoanalytic inner circle. Masson's psychoanalytic practice was not very successful but, based on his friendship with Eissler, he moved in the highest circles of psychoanalysis. He learned German and specialized in the history of psychoanalysis, and was briefly project director of the Sigmund Freud Archives.

After gaining access to Freud's correspondence, Masson took the position that, in order to advance the cause of psychoanalysis, and in part to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle, Freud had rejected his so-called seduction theory, which said that childhood reports of sexual abuse were real, and had developed instead the theory that many, if not most, such reports were fantasy. [1] See Sandor Ferenczi.

Word of Masson's controversial position reached the New York Times, and after Masson was interviewed by a reporter, his theories were published in the Times to the dismay of the psychoanalytic establishment. Shortly thereafter he was removed from his job as project director of the Freud Archives, and he left the psychoanalytic organizations he belonged to and wrote several books critical of psychoanalysis. These events are described in Janet Malcolm's book In The Freud Archives. After the book was published, Masson sued Malcolm, claiming that five quotes she attributed to him were fictitious; the case was resolved in Malcolm's favour after ten years in the courts.

There has been significant criticism of Masson's claims about Freud's alleged suppression of abuse. Contrary to Masson's The Assault on Truth, some documents contemporary to Freud, especially his letters to Wilhelm Fleiss, seem to suggest that he pressured, directly or indirectly, some patients into admissions or 'reproductions' of putatively forgotten incidents of abuse. If that is true, then Freud's subsequent abandonment of the unconsious memories of abuse theory and his adoption of the sexual fantasy theory might be viewed as a step towards intellectual honesty. Nevertheless the issue remains unresolved.

Lately Masson has written several books on the emotional life of animals.

Masson's books

• The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory.
• Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing.
• He edited The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904.
• A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century
• Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1990, ISBN 0-201-52368-X.
• The Oceanic Feeling: The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India
• My Father's Guru
• Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs
• When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals
• The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals

External links

• Jeffrey Masson's website
• "Psychoanalytic Mythology" by Allen Esterson, ButterfliesandWheels.com
• "Jeffrey Masson and Freud's seduction theory: a new fable based on old myths" by Allen Esterson, ButterfliesandWheels.com