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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.

About the freudian cover-up
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!

Rebecca Hamilton, Teens for Agnosticism & Social Action
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.