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The Assault on Truth

The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory
The Assault on Truth, 1984 edition.jpg
Cover of the first edition
Author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Country United States
Language English
Subject Sigmund Freud
Freud's seduction theory
Published 1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 308 (first edition)
343 (1998 Pocket books edition)
ISBN

The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory is a book by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, in which the author argues that Sigmund Freud deliberately suppressed his early hypothesis, known as the seduction theory, that hysteria is caused by sexual abuse during infancy, because he refused to believe that children are the victims of sexual violence and abuse within their own families. Masson reached this conclusion while he had access to some of Freud's unpublished letters as projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archives. The Assault on Truth was first published in 1984, and several revised editions have since been published.

The book aroused massive publicity and controversy. It received many negative reviews, several of which rejected Masson's reading of psychoanalytic history, and was condemned by reviewers within the psychoanalytic profession. The book came to be seen as the latest in a series of attacks on psychoanalysis and an expression of a widespread "anti-Freudian mood". its overall reception has been described as mixed. Some feminists endorsed Masson's conclusions and other commentators have seen merit in his book despite its failings. Masson has been criticized for maintaining without evidence that the seduction theory was correct, for his discussion of Freud's treatment of his patient Emma Eckstein, and for suggesting that children are by nature innocent and asexual. Masson has been blamed for accelerating the spread of the recovered memory movement by implying that a collective effort to retrieve painful memories of incest was required, although he has rejected the accusation as unfounded.

Formerly a Sanskrit professor, Masson retrained as a psychoanalyst, and in the 1970s found support within the psychoanalytic profession in the United States. His relationship with the psychoanalyst Kurt R. Eissler helped him become the projects director of the Freud Archives, where he was entrusted with publishing the authorized edition of the correspondence between Freud and Wilhelm Fliess. Masson aroused controversy after presenting his views about the origins of Freud's psychoanalytic theories in a paper delivered at a 1981 meeting of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society. The New York Times printed two articles reporting Masson's views, as well as an interview with him. Eissler fired Masson, who retaliated with writs. The journalist Janet Malcolm published two long articles about the controversy in The New Yorker, which were later issued as a book, In the Freud Archives (1984).


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