Good day!

Please read my profile on Linked In to see how I came to meet Dr. Jeffrey Masson by email, to the point where I became 'obsessed' with generating my own conclusions regarding the still very controversial 'Seduction Theory Controversy' that led to Dr. Masson going public with his complaints about his perspective on Freud's alleged 'suppression' of his early (1896) Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory.

On a fateful meeting on April 21st, 1896, Freud read his highly provocative theory on 'The Aetiology of Hysteria' to The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society connecting early childhood sexual abuse with hysteria (passive sexual abuse) as well as to obsessional neurosis (active childhood sexual abuse).

After the reading of his paper, the leader of the Society, Dr. Krafft-Ebing, called Freud's paper a 'scientific fairy tale' -- and Freud walked off into the evening, writing Fliess a few days later and calling the members of the Society 'jackasses' for rejecting his paper. Freud still wrote up the paper and had it published later in May of 1896.

However, Freud seemed to be waffling on his childhood sexual abuse theory, even as early as January, 1896, calling hysteria a mixture of, and conflict between, pleasurable and unpleasurable early childhood sexual experience, of either the passive (hysteria) or active (obsessional neurosis) type..

Over the next few years, say from the beginning of 1896 to the end of 1899, and even up to 1905, (Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality), Freud basically turned his early theory of trauma and childhood sexual abuse upside down, creating a new 'fantasy-drive-libido' theory' where 'infantile and childhood sexuality' was viewed as the breeding ground for much later 'adult perversions', 'fixations', 'regressions', 'obsessive compulsions' and the like that separated the 'neurotics' sexual behavior from what might be called the more 'centrally based adult sexual behavior' that more 'normal-neurotics' engage in. Still, we all have our 'signature fantasies' based on early childhood experience.

Today, this second take on human neurosis and sexual behavior stands out as as what is usually called : Fantasy, Drive, Childhood Sexuality, and Ego-Defense Theory which collectively is usually referred to as Classical (Freudian) Psychoanalysis whereas as his early trauma and childhood sexual abuse theory (and the beginning of ego-defense theory) are usually referred to collectively as Freud's 'Pre-Psychoanalytic theories' (meaning they were written and believed in pre-1897, before later being largely rejected).

Classical theory started to take its early shape in 1896 and 1897 as Freud began to trumpet the ideas of 'wish fulfillment', 'instincts' or 'drives', 'infantile and childhood sexuality', and the beginning of 'The Oedipus Complex' in a private letter to Wilhelm Fliess in October of 1897 -- . 'Screen Memories' and 'The Interpretation of Dreams would not be finished and published until 1899, although the publication date listed on The Interpretation of Dreams was, and still is1900, to freshly bring in the 20th century with a new Copernican-like, Darwin-like conception of the human mind and unconscious psycho-dynamics controlling our conscious thoughts and behavior much more than we previously believed. Bringing in this new conceputalization of the mind both before and after 1896 remains Freud's legacy as being one of the most creative and provocative minds of the late 19th and early 20th century..

Relative to Masson in the 1980s, he probably would not have lost his very high profile job as The Projects Director of The Freud Archives if he hadn't brought into question the very moral integrity of Freud's character.

However, he did, and for this Masson paid with his short but very charismatic career, claiming in interviews in the early 1980s that Freud during and/or after 1896 started to 'lose moral integrity' as he began to 'suppress' his earlier findings and theories on the causal/etiological relationship between hysteria and his Trauma-Seduction (Childhood Sexual Abuse) Theory which later took the limelight off of adult male sexual abusers, and instead shone the light on 'childhood sexual instinct' to the point of even 'inventing' allegedly 'false or distorted memories' that were allegedly created, according to the later Freud, by underlying childhood erotic desires which turned into adult unconscious/repressed adult erotic desires of the same basic childhood background combing genetic instinct with 'environmental coincidences' or 'accidents'.

Masson argued publicly in the 1980s that Freud's 'instinct, fantasy, childhood sexuality, and Oedipus Complex theories were all part of Freud's 'loss of moral integrity' in terms of his post 1896 insisting that many of his previous female patients had not been sexually abused at all but were simply unconsciously relating to Freud the childhood desires of The Oedipus Complex and childhood sexual fantasies woven into what he now called 'distorted memories' of incestuous fantasies which he had previously insisted were real cases of childhood sexual abuse.

Masson lost his high profile job in the fall of 1982 -- and indeed began to leave or be evicted from all the different psychoanalytic societies he was involved in.

After writing a series of 'anti-theory', 'anti-psychiatry' and 'anti-psychoanalysis' books in the mid 1980s and early 1990s, Masson eventually pulled away from this scene altogether, became an animal psychologist specializing on 'emotions in animals', and around the mid 1990s, left for New Zealand with his wife to raise a family and to continue to study animal psychology and emotions, publishing a series of very popular books in this domain.

Masson still resides in New Zealand today, and did his 2010 interview with me by email from New Zealand.

Who was right? Freud and The Psychoanalytic Society on their mutual defense of the 'clinical legitimacy' of Freud's 180 degree change in theory starting in 1896?

Or Masson and his claim that Freud 'lost moral courage' in order basically not to be blackballed and thrown out of his profession by his surrounding members of The Vienna Psychiatry and Neurology Society?

This subject matter still remains a very controversial -- albeit now largely 'dormant' but still very sensitive -- subject matter both within and outside of Psychoanalysis today.
More and more psychoanalysts, for their part, have probably left Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis for now less controversial theories such as 'Object Relations' Theory (Klein, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Guntrip...), 'Attachment Theory', 'Self-Psychology (Kohut and others...), Lacan, Bion -- none of these theories which contain Freud's arguably 'most controversial theory' -- the Oedipus Theory (as well as his later 'Life and Death Instinct Theory' (1920 and onward) which contains the sometimes huge epistemological problem of 'real' vs. 'distorted and/or entirely false' conscious and/or unconscious memories -- but especially unconscious ones.

I aim to integrate, re-work, and expand all 45 years of Freud's professional theorizing (1893 to 1938), both relative to Freud's early trauma and seduction theories as well as his later fantasy theories, and then on to largely post-Freudian Object Relations, Self Psychology, and Neo-Psychoanalytic, Adlerian Psychology, Stekel's Psychology, Ferenczi's, Rank's, Jungian Psychology, Gestalt Therapy, Fromm, Horney, Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis, my own modified brand of Nietzsche's early and later Humanistic-Existentialism, and elements of Korzybski's and Hayakawa's ideas from General Semantics, and other forms of 'Cognitive-Emotional-Behavior Theory and Therapy (Ellis, Beck, Kelly, Maxwell Maltz, Nathaniel Branden, and Donald Meichenbaum who I wrote my final thesis for in 1979 at The University of Waterloo, to get my Honours B.A, in Psychology before getting involved with both The Adlerian Institute of Ontario (1980-81), and The Gestalt Institute of Toronto (off and on between 1979 and 1991), hearing the famous Dr. Harold Mosak speak from The Adlerian Institute in Chicago, and training under two of the last three Directors of The Gestlt Institute of Toronto (Jorge Rosner and JoAnne Greenham).

After spending a lot of time investigating -- and drawing my own integrative conclusions -- on Freud's infamous Seduction Theory, my 'obsessional interest' in psychoanalysis became more than this, leading to what I am calling a full integrative and unique brand of 'DGB Neo-Psychoanalysis'.
Incidentally, I tend to side more with Masson's side of the argument although unlike Masson, I have found a way to integrate Freud's early reality and trauma theory with his later fantasy theory whereas Masson believed that Freud's early (pre-1897) reality-trauma-seduction theory was simply a superior brand of psychoanalysis to his later fantasy (Classical) theory.

I found and offer a 'peace bridge' between Masson and The Psychoanalytic Establishment as unlikely as that is to happen some 30 years after this conflict resulted in a rather nasty 'psychoanalytic divorce'.

'You're right from your side; I'm right from mine. We're both just one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind.' -- Bob Dylan

Welcome aboard for those of you who wish to follow my re-working of all 45 years of Freud's theorizing (1893 to 1938); not just the last 38 years (1900 to 1938).

Cheers!

-- dgb, David Gordon Bain, October 31st, 2014.


Dr. Ewa Carlton 1st
Teacher of Psychology and Health and Social Care at Great Marlow School
I am a huge fan of Jeffrey Masson. Insofar, this is my favourite piece of your writings. I like your realistic depiction of Psychoanalysis.