Jeffrey Masson and Ferenczi renaissance (RP)

Jeffrey Masson (b 1941) is best known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his The Assault on Truth (1984), Massoneffre argues that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because he feared that granting the truth of his female patients' claims (that they had been sexually abused) would hinder the acceptance of his psychoanalytic methods.

In 1970, Masson began studying to become a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, completing a full clinical training course in 1978. His training analyst was Irvine Schiffer, a well-known Toronto analyst and author of books on the unconscious aspects of charisma and time. In 1990 Masson published an autobiographical book in which he accused Schiffer of cursing, being constantly late for sessions, and intimidating Masson when the latter complained about this issue.^[4] Schiffer denied it and debated Masson on the Canadian television program The Fifth Estate.^[5].

During this time, Masson befriended the psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler and became acquainted with Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna Freud. Eissler designated Masson to succeed him as Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives after his and Anna Freud's deaths. Masson learned German and studied the history of psychoanalysis. In 1980 Masson was appointed Projects Director of the Freud Archives, with full access to Freud's correspondence and other unpublished papers. While perusing this material, Masson concluded that Freud might have rejected the seduction theory in order to advance the cause of psychoanalysis and to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle, after a hostile response from the renowned sex-pathologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing and the rest of the Vienna Psychiatric Society in 1896 — "an icy reception from the jackasses," was the way Freud described it later to Fliess.^[6]

In 1981, Masson's controversial conclusions were discussed in a series of New York Times articles by Ralph Blumenthal, to the dismay of the psychoanalytic establishment. Masson was subsequently dismissed from his position as project director of the Freud Archives and stripped of his membership in psychoanalytic professional societies. Masson was defended by Alice Miller^[7] and Muriel Gardiner ("While striving not to take sides," Gardiner said, "I consider him a good and energetic worker and a worthwhile scholar").^[8]

Masson later wrote several books critical of psychoanalysis, including The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. In the introduction to The Assault on Truth, Masson challenged his critics to address his arguments: "My pessimistic conclusions may possibly be wrong. The documents may in fact allow a very different reading."^[9] Janet Malcolm interviewed Masson at length when writing her long New Yorker article on this controversy, which she later expanded into In the Freud Archives, a book that also dealt with Eissler and Peter Swales. Masson sued The New Yorker for defamation, claiming that Malcolm had misquoted him. The ensuing trial drew considerable attention.^[10] The decade-long, US$10 million lawsuit came to a close in 1994 when the court ruled in The New Yorker‘s favor.^[11] "The Court of Appeals affirmed ... that Malcolm had deliberately altered each quotation not found on the tape recordings, but nevertheless held that petitioner failed to raise a jury question of actual malice."^[12] Subsequent to the case, Janet Malcolm claimed to have found her handwritten notes indicating that Masson had lied in relation to the remaining disputed quotations, as he had lied in relation to quotations where there were recordings.^[13][14]

In 1985, Masson edited and translated Freud's complete correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess after having convinced Anna Freud to make it available in full. He also looked up the original places and documents in La Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris,^[15] where Freud had studied with Charcot. Masson writes that the scientific community has been largely silent about his views, and that he suffered personal attacks once he deviated from the traditional views on the seduction theory and the history of psychoanalysis.^[4] Both the traditional view and Masson's case against it are built on the account that Freud's seduction theory patients reported having been sexually abused in early childhood; several Freud scholars have disputed this account.^[16]

• 1984. The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-10642-8
• 1984. "Freud and the Seduction Theory A challenge to the foundations of psychoanalysis," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1984.
• 1985. (editor and translator) The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. ISBN 0-674-15420-7
• 1986. A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. ISBN 0-374-13501-0
• 1988. Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing. ISBN 0-689-11929-1
• 1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X

你要理解，Anna Freud (1895-1982)，在世時，擁有精神分析帝國，掌權極大，對異議岐出者不會手軟；Kohut 1981 過世；Masson 1981 失寵，被剝奪分析師資格；Mitchell 和 Greenberg 1983 書成 (應檢索，看看他們在 1983 當時，如何理解 Ferenczi 和 Michael Balint) (他們根本沒有處理 Ferenczi 和 Michael Balint)；Ferenczi 的 Clinical Diary 1985 法文版出，1988 英文版出；照 Bass 昨說法，關係學派到 1988 才發現，他們的老祖宗，原來是 Ferenczi；意思是說，今天回顧上述過程，你才知道，Ferenczi 的復興，發生在 1980 年代，是有原因的，因為他的臨床日記，被審查掩埋五十年後，「終於才有出土的條件」，以至 The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi (1993)，The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi: From ghost to ancestor （2015）歸宗書成，