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Translated here for the first time is a series of shocking and profoundly influential texts from 19th-century German psychiatric literature. Though almost completely unknown to modern readers, these writings have cast a long, devastating shadow over 20th-century attitudes toward women and children.
Seminal and often brutal, these articles delve into perceived sexual "lies" and "fantasies" of children, documenting cruel treatments for masturbation, hysteria, and vaginismus. They also explore disturbing incidents involving allegations of fabricated sexual abuse attributed to "prematurely perverted" children. The ideas presented here still resonate, having taken a terrible toll on the intellectual foundations of modern psychiatry.
Collected and translated by Jeffrey Masson, these nine articles expose a critical, dark point in the history of psychology. They reveal how ignorance and deeply ingrained negative attitudes towards women and child sexuality created a flawed science whose legacy modern psychiatrists still grapple with.
While by no means an "easy read," this collection is essential for understanding the historical roots of certain psychiatric beliefs and the ongoing struggle to overcome damaging perspectives.
About the author
Masson has had at least four lives: first as a boy raised to become a "spiritual leader" (see his denunciation of such a life in My Father's Guru). While in the middle of his disillusion, he became a professor of Sanskrit at the University of Toronto. At the same time he trained to become a Freudian analyst. Upon graduation he became Projects Director of the Freud Archives, and was scheduled to move into Freud's house in London when fate intervened: Masson found documents which seemed to show that Freud was right in believing that many women had been sexually abused as children, and that he was wrong to give up this belief, perhaps impelled by societal displeasure at his discoveries. Saying this publicly turned Masson into a psychoanalytic pariah, and he gave up both his professorship and his analytic career to delve into the far more fascinating world of animal emotions. Two of his books, WHEN ELEPHANTS WEEP and DOGS NEVER LIE ABOUT LOVE, were New York Times best-sellers. He lived on a beach in New Zealand with his two sons, Ilan and Manu, and his German wife, Leila, a pediatrician who works with children on the autistic spectrum (using the bio-medical approach), Benjy, a golden lab, and three cats for 14 years. They moved to Europe (Malaga and Berlin) and are now living in Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. They often travel to the States to see their grandchild, and Europe to see Leila's family.
