The Assault on Truth [Freud] by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory

This is a REPRINT of an exceedingly difficult book to find. 

Please allow two weeks for the book to be delivered.

Note: This book is a reproduction of the historical text for academic, historical, or collector purposes.

2012 ebook edition printed in 2026 (previous editions 1984, 1986, 1992, 1998, 2003)

6" x 9" / 297 pages

Book description

The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory is a book by the former psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, in which the author argues that Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, deliberately suppressed his early hypothesis, known as the seduction theory, that hysteria caused by sexual abuse during infancy, because he refused to believe that children are the victims of sexual violence and abuse within their own families. Masson reached this conclusion while he had access to several of Freud's unpublished letters as projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archives. The Assault on Truth was first published in 1984 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; several revised editions have since been published.

The book aroused massive publicity and controversy. It received many negative reviews, several of which rejected Masson's reading of psychoanalytic history. It was condemned by reviewers within the psychoanalytic profession, and came to be seen as the latest in a series of attacks on psychoanalysis and an expression of a widespread "anti-Freudian mood."