You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The strange story of Masson and his relationship with Kurt Eissler, Anna Freud and others has been dramatically told by Janet Malcolm in the columns of the New Yorker and recently in a book. Masson's own views are now available as a book, which was foreshadowed by her. It has qualities of lively writing combined with a remarkable degree of scholarly research which help one to understand the fact that Eissler was so fascinated by this relatively young man that he arranged for Masson to take his place in running the Freud Archives. Thanks to Eissler's advocacy Anna Freud was also won over. As a result of all this Masson obtained access to a great deal of material which had not previously come to light; this included, for instance, the letters from Freud to Fleiss which had been omitted from the published version.
The main theme of “The Assault on Truth” is conveyed by its sub-title, “Freud's suppression of the seduction theory.”
There is no doubt that when Freud reached the conclusion that he had very often been mistaken in believing the stories of childhood seduction that he obtained from his hysterical patients, and its traumatic effects, this was a dramatic and vital turning point in the development of psychoanalysis; the edifice he had built seemed to be in ruins, and he showed great courage and perseverance in rebuilding it on the new foundations of psychic reality, fantasy and infantile sexuality. It is Masson's thesis that he was wrong to abandon the earlier theory and that his motives for so doing were suspect, the main motive he alleges being the wish to rehabilitate himself with the medical orthodoxy which had so roundly condemned him, for in his heart of hearts he knew that the seduction theory was correct. What had led him to that theory? Masson's admirable researches suggest that it originated when he was in Paris with Charcot where he may well have been influenced by Brouardel, Bernard and Tardieu, all of whom wrote about the frequency of sexual assaults o