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Hysteria, the most ancient of medical diseases, has become one of the most controversial in psychoanalytical discourse. In The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory, Masson challenges Freud's rejection of his first theory of the origin of hysteria from infantile sexual seduction: Freud suppressed his seduction theory because he feared opprobrium and he craved acceptance. Masson assails Freud for stigmatizing his patients as liars. Consequently, everything that followed the recantation has rendered psychoanalysis theoretically sterile and clinically ineffective.
Masson uses the word "truth" as synonymous with the recalled reality of childhood sexual seduction as described by Freud in 1896. The general theory of infantile sexuality, which was later described, is seen by Masson as an assault on truth and a suppression of the seduction theory. The argument is ad hominem; the polemic, presented in this mode, is itself a fallacy. Not surprisingly, but unfortunately, the unfavorable analysis of Freud's character and purposes has been