On 25 November 2007 Beth wrote re the seduction theory episode: > [...] That said, I would like to find out how many other TIPSters > have come across this scenario: Masson's concept is still going > strong in textbooks! I inherited a Personality Theory class from > a colleague with medical problems, so the textbook was already > chosen and purchased by students. In it, guess whose theory is > prominently described? Yep, Masson's! I was quite surprised > and told my students that this is quite controversial, and considered > by learned Freudian scholars (that would be Allen) to be untrue.
Christ commented on this: > Most people would rather hear a shocking tale that than the boring > truth. [...] I think there is more to it than this. Masson's account is only too *plausible* -- as long as one accepts the oft-repeated traditional story of the episode, taken as historical fact for most of the twentieth century. (And if you are unaware -- and how could readers know? -- of serious historical distortions in Masson's *The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory*, an account tendentiously fashioned to be consistent with his thesis once he had alighted on it.) Ironically, Masson's supposed exposure of Freud's alleged dishonest cover-up is dependent on a blind acceptance of Freud's final retrospective account of the episode, the one in which he says that most of his female patients at the time *told* him that they had been sexually abused by their *fathers* in early childhood, a story contradicted by the original 1896 papers in relation to both words I've emphasized. Incidentally, in the late 1980s several Freud scholars arrived at similar conclusions about the seduction theory episode to those of Cioffi in 1974, including Han Israels, Max Scharnberg and J.G. Schimek. Chris wrote: > This sort of thing is hardly restricted to Freud. The JB Watson > sex research story goes around and around as well. True - but the recasting of Freud's dubious seduction theory claims that started in the late 1970s, made popular by Masson's supposed 'scholarship', had wider effects; it played a significant role in buttressing the ideas of the "recovered memory" movement that wrought havoc on many people's lives both in the States and the UK. In addition, the sheer amount of dubious items one can cite in relation to Freud puts his case in a class well beyond that of the Watson episode. References: Cioffi, F. (1998 [1974]). "Was Freud a liar?", in *Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience* (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court), pp. 199-204. Esterson, A. (1993). *Seductive mirage: An exploration of the work of Sigmund Freud*. (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court). My seduction theory articles: "A Seductive Story": http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=195 Journal articles: http://www.esterson.org/Masson_and_Freuds_seduction_theory.htmww http://www.esterson.org/Myth_of_Freuds_ostracism.htm http://www.esterson.org/Mythologizing_psychoanalytic_history.htm Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London www.esterson.org ---
