Eisen-Suppressed-Inventions-and-other-Discoveries-True-Stories-of ...

The Suppression of Unorthodox Science 189
I began to notice what appeared to be a pattern in the omissions made
by Anna Freud in the original, unabridged edition. In the letters written
after September 1897 (when Freud was supposed to have "given up"
his "seduction" theory), all the case histories dealing with sexual seduction
of children were excised.
When Masson's book was finally published, he was already cast out,
and the reason is obvious: He was accusing Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis,
of having sold out. Moreover,
I believe that Freud is largely responsible for. . . having given intellectual
sophistication to a wrong view (that women invent rape) [and] for
the perpetuation of a view that is comforting to male society.
He was also saying that the doctrines of modern psychoanalysis rest on
a very shaky foundation indeed:
The psychoanalytic movement that grew out of Freud's accommodation
to the views of his peers holds to the present position that Freud's earlier
position was simply an aberration.
Masson was attacked, as he says, with more vitriol and personal "ad
hominem" arguments than he was with anything substantive, and he
wound up taking to court one reviewer, Jill Malcolm and her magazine,
The New Yorker, in a famous libel suit—which he won. Robert Goldman,
writing in The California Monthly, would probably have agreed with the
decision when he wrote:
. . . Malcolm's account of Jeffrey Masson is a tendentious, dishonest,
and malicious piece of character assassination, all the more pernicious
because of its studied tone of mildly amused detachment. Had her articles
(and now book) never appeared, the arguments of Masson's book
surely would have been given a fairer and more dispassionate hearing
than is now seemingly possible.
With Masson's study of Freud we find a very clear indication that the
so-called intellectual community is as much a part of the suppression syndrome
as any other, despite pretensions to considered rationality or intellectual
stewardship. The roughing up that people like Masson receive only
serves to indicate how fundamentally insecure is our existential human
condition. Our hold on honesty is tenuous; we seem ready to sell out when
push comes to shove.
This goes far to explain why we have come so little way from the witch
burnings of Salem. Masson is a classic whistle-blower; the child who