The Assault on Truth: Freud and Child Sexual Abuse - Softcover

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006377394 ISBN 13: 9780006377399

Publisher: Flamingo, 1992

Synopsis

In 1981 Jeffrey Masson, then a practising psychoanalyst and director of the Freud Archives, used his access to Freud's long-unpublished letters to challenge the very foundations of Freudian theory. This book asserts that Freud, personally reluctant to face the reality of sexual abuse of children and fearing negative public reaction to such a shocking theory, abandoned a valid scientific finding. Freud's revised theory - that his patients' "memories" of seduction and rape were in fact fantasies - became and remains the basis for the whole science of psychoanalysis; it is a theory, Masson argues, that needs careful re-examination.

About this title

About the Author:

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, ex-psychoanalyst and former projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, has written more than a dozen books, including the bestsellers The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats, Dogs Never Lie About Love, and When Elephants Weep. A longtime resident of Berkeley, California, he now lives in New Zealand with his wife, two sons, and five cats.

From the Inside Flap:

In 1896, Sigmund Freud presented his revolutionary “seduction theory,” arguing that acts of sexual abuse and violence inflicted on children are the direct cause of adult mental illness. Nine years later, Freud completely reversed his position, insisting that these sexual memories were actually fantasies that never happened. Why did Freud retract the seduction theory? And why has the psychoanalytic community gone to such lengths to conceal that retraction? In this landmark book, drawing on his unique access to formerly sealed and hidden papers, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson dares to uncover the truth about this critical turning point in Freud’s career and its enduring impact on the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.

The Assault on Truth reveals a reality that neither Freud nor his followers could bear to face. Bracing in its honesty, gripping its revelations, this is the book that prompted Masson’s break with the psychoanalytic community–and launched his subsequent brilliant career as an independent thinker and writer.

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0006377394
• ISBN 13: 9780006377399
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352