Janet Malcolm shows that analysts ignored Masson's ideas until they were forced
to confront them because of the 1981 New York Times articles as well as the
discoveries by nonanalytic therapists of the realities of sexual abuse.  Instead
of being the first to deal with real sexual abuse and the phenomenon of false
memories, they were among the last. She also presents evidence indicating the
true theoretical significance of the Masson controversy which analysts have
evaded and continue to evade.  This appears on pp. 54-56 where she describes a
meeting at the house of Richard Newman following the presentation of his paper
at Yale. Masson says, "About thirty analysts from the Western New England
Institute had come, and not one of them had the guts or the brains to do
anything but repeat the same old tired psychoanalytic cliches. . and I said,
'Now, look, ladies and gentlemen, do you really believe that there's no
difference between a fantasy and a reality?'  And they said, 'Well, you know,
Freud has said it very clearly: there is no important distinction to be made.
In the end, it doesn't matter whether it's fantasy or reality.' So I said, "What
do you do with something like Auschwitz? Surely you're not going to tell me that
the realityof Auschwitz doesn't matter--that all that matters is how people
experience it? You're not going to tell me that there are different ways of
experiencing Auschwitz, are you?'"  Masson goes on to report a story by one
analyst of how a patient may have been made a stronger person by the Auschwitz
experience. Masson says, "The business of analysis is to undo defense and get to
the pain and the sorrow.  But they were arguing that there is no such thing as
reality--that there is no single Auschwitz.  That is the worst thing that
analysis has left the world: the notion that there is no reality, that there are
only individual experiences of it. That is Freud's legacy to the twentieth
century." Janet Malcolm replies, "That sounds like a travesty of the analytic
view." and Masson says, "They've said it.  There are hundreds of articles on
that--on the positiver effect of sexual seduction. There are classical articles
that say it isn't always such a bad thing."
 
I don't endorse Masson's scholarship, and I believe his speculations about
Freud's motives distract attention from the major theoretical issue which
(contrary to Andrew Brook) is the relationship of psychic reality to reality, an
issue still unresolved in psychoanalysis and evaded by the psychoanalytic
journals for reasons that I don't understand.  The only explanation I can think
of is that even heretics retain a residue of Freud Worship and are unable to
tolerate new ideas other than their own.  I invite listmembers to propose
publicly or privately any other hypothesis that accounts for facts anyone can
verify by reading the psychoanalytic journals.
Eric Gillett, M.D.  [log in to unmask]