Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Life and career

Jeffrey Masson is the son of Jacques Masson, a French Mizrahi Sephardic Jew of Bukharian ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger from an Ashkenazi strict Orthodox Jewish family. Both of his parents were followers of the guru Paul Brunton. Masson's mother later became a follower of mystic John Levy. During the 1940s and 1950s, Brunton often lived with them, eventually designating Masson as his heir apparent. In 1956, Diana and Jacques Masson moved to Uruguay because Brunton believed that a third world war was imminent. Jeffrey and his sister Linda followed in 1959.

At Brunton's urging, Masson went to Harvard University to study Sanskrit. While at Harvard, Masson became disillusioned with Brunton. Brunton and his influence on the Masson family form the subject of Masson's autobiographical book My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion. Harvard University granted Masson a B.A. in 1964 and a Ph.D. with Honors in 1970. His degrees were in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. While undertaking his Ph.D., Masson also studied, supported by fellowships, at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Calcutta, and the University of Poona.

Masson taught Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the University of Toronto, 1969–80, reaching the rank of Professor. He has also held short term appointments at Brown University, the University of California, and the University of Michigan. From 1981 to 1992, he was a Research Associate, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Views on Freud's seduction theory

In 1970, Masson began studying to become a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, completing a full clinical training course in 1978. His training analyst was Irvine Schiffer, a well-known Toronto analyst and author of books on the unconscious aspects of charisma and time. In 1990 Masson published an autobiographical book in which he accused Schiffer of cursing and being late for sessions. Schiffer denied it and debated Masson on the Canadian television program The Fifth Estate.

During this time, Masson befriended the psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler and became acquainted with Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna Freud. Eissler designated Masson to succeed him as Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives after his and Anna Freud's death. Masson learned German and studied the history of psychoanalysis. In 1980 Masson was appointed Projects Director of the Freud Archives, with full access to Freud's correspondence and other unpublished papers. While perusing this material, Masson concluded that Freud might have rejected the seduction theory in order to advance the cause of psychoanalysis and to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle, after a hostile response from the renowned sex-pathologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing and the rest of the Vienna Psychiatric Society in 1896 - "an icy reception from the jackasses," was the way Freud described it later to Fliess

In 1981, Masson's controversial conclusions were discussed in a series of New York Times articles by Ralph Blumenthal, to the dismay of the psychoanalytic establishment. Masson was subsequently dismissed from his position as project director of the Freud Archives and stripped of his membership in psychoanalytic professional societies. Masson was defended by Alice Miller and Muriel Gardiner ("While striving not to take sides," Gardiner said, "I consider him a good and energetic worker and a worthwhile scholar").

Masson later wrote several books critical of psychoanalysis, including The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. In the introduction to The Assault on Truth, Masson challenged his critics to address his arguments: "My pessimistic conclusions may possibly be wrong. The documents may in fact allow a very different reading." Janet Malcolm interviewed Masson at length when writing her long New Yorker article on this controversy, which she later expanded into In the Freud Archives, a book that also dealt with Eissler and Peter Swales. Masson sued The New Yorker for defamation, claiming that Malcolm had misquoted him. The ensuing trial drew considerable attention. The decade-long, US$10 million lawsuit came to a close in 1994 when the court ruled in The New Yorker 's favor. "The Court of Appeals affirmed... that Malcolm had deliberately altered each quotation not found on the tape recordings, but nevertheless held that petitioner failed to raise a jury question of actual malice."

In 1985, Masson edited and translated Freud's complete correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess after having convinced Anna Freud to make it available in full. He also looked up the original places and documents in La Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, where Freud had studied with Charcot. Masson writes that the scientific community has been largely silent about his views. Several Freud scholars have disputed the traditional story that Freud's seduction theory patients reported having been sexually abused in early childhood, the basis on which Masson built his case.

Recent work

Since the early 1990s, Masson has written a number of books on the emotional life of animals, one of which, When Elephants Weep, has been translated into 20 languages. He has explained this radical change in the subject of his writings as follows:

I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, "As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals."

In 2008, Masson became a Director of Voiceless, the animal protection institute. "We are not encouraged, on a daily basis, to pay careful attention to the animals we eat. On the contrary, the meat, dairy, and egg industries all actively encourage us to give thought to our own immediate interest (taste, for example, or cheap food) but not to the real suffering involved... The animals involved suffer agony because of our ignorance. The least we owe them is to lessen that ignorance".

Masson also wrote a book about living in New Zealand, including an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary.

Personal life

Masson is married to Leila Masson, a German pediatrician. They have two sons. He also has a daughter by a previous marriage with Therese Claire Masson. In the early 1990s, Masson had been engaged to University of Michigan feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who wrote the preface to his A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century.

Masson became a vegan in 2004. He is an animal rights activist.

Name

Masson's great-grandfather Shlomo Moussaieff was a kabbalist and founder of the Bukharian Quarter in Jerusalem. His grandfather Henry Mousaieff changed his family name from Moussaieff to Masson. Masson changed his middle name from Lloyd to Moussaieff.

Works

Reviews of his books