It seems to me there is a persisting tendency to underestimate the evidence provided by the response of analysts to Masson for the avoidance of discussion in psychoanalysis. Geoffrey Blowers said, "in fairness to them, most analysts would not have been in a position to respond to Masson's specific claims about Freud's deliberately changing his mind about the role of seduction because, prior to appearance of the book, unlike Masson, they did not have access to the unpublished letters which were the source of Masson's conjectures." John Davis describes an annual meeting of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis where Masson was an invited speaker. John says, "he was given a good hearing until he asserted that because of his ideas all psychoanalysis was a fraud, and should be stopped." I am not defending Masson's beliefs or behavior, but I believe those who have so far commented on this issue avoid acknowledging the picture vividly drawn by Janet Malcolm of the way analysts totally ignored Masson's claims when they were first presented prior to the publicity he recieved from the New York Times. Although Masson may have recieved the "good hearing" described by John, this occurred much later after events that made it no longer possible for analysts to dodge the issue of Freud's seduction theory. How many of you have read Malcolm's book? For those with sufficient interest to pursue the evidence on this matter, I recommend reading "'Incest--See Under Oedipus Complex': The History of an Error in Psychoanalysis" by Bennett Simon (JAPA 1992 40:p.955). Simon says, "Certain features of our field make it all too likely that new errors can be generated that may similarly take decades to recognize and undo. These include the politics of our discipline, and negative attitudes toward systematic gathering and assessment of evidence." Simon notes the contradictory accounts Freud gave that were publicly available. Surveying the psychoanalytic literature, Simon notes that an address by Abraham in 1910 (now lost) was the "end to the discussion of the topic, with only a few notable exceptions, for around 40 years." I believe the failure of analysts to respond to Masson illustrates my thesis of the fear of retaliation as a significant cause for the avoidance of discussion. Otherwise, these analysts could at least have discussed their own clinical experiences with victims of incest. Another useful paper is "Fact and Fantasy in the Seduction Theory: A Historical Review" by Jean Schimek (JAPA, 1987, p. 937). Geoffrey is correct in saying that the lack of access to unpublished letters placed some limits on what analysts could have said to Masson, but the papers published in psychoanalytic journals following Masson's success in publicizing his case via the New York Times reveals that there was much analysts could have said if they had had the courage.