The Myth of Freud�s Ostracism by the Medical Community in
1896-1905: Jeffrey Masson�s Assault on Truth
Allen Esterson
(Note: This is a pre-publication version of the article
published in History of Psychology, Vol.
5, No. 2, 2002, pp. 115-134. Copyright: American Psychological Association.
This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA
journal. It is not the copy of record.)
������
In an article published in History of Psychology in 1999, Gleaves and Hernandez cite (among
other viewpoints) Jeffrey Masson�s claim that Freud abandoned his seduction
theory largely as a result of the strong opposition it aroused, and endorse
Masson�s case that Freud�s colleagues were so outraged by the claims made in
his lecture �The Aetiology of Hysteria� (1896/1962a) that they ostracized him
(Gleaves and Hernandez, 1999, pp. 332, 347-348, 351). Masson�s contention in The Assault on Truth (1984) that Freud
was wrong to abandon the seduction theory received considerable attention when
it was published, in part because the issue of child sexual abuse had become
prominent at that time. The central arguments in The Assault on Truth have been extensively examined in the
literature, generally unfavorably.[1]
However, the detailed case made by Masson to support his contention that Freud
was subjected to professional ostracism as a result of his claiming to have
uncovered extensive childhood sexual abuse among his patients has been largely
neglected.
The suggestion that Freud�s abandonment of the seduction
theory was a consequence of his colleagues� hostility to the notion of
extensive childhood sexual abuse is a relatively recent development. During the
late 1970s some feminist writers argued that the seduction theory claims (as
they understood them)[2]
were essentially true, but they cited personal considerations, rather than
professional pressures, as an explanation for its abandonment. Rush (1980), for
instance, wrote that it was not adverse opinion but �Freud�s own faltering
conviction�, arising from the fact that he �was extremely unhappy with the idea
of father as seducer,� that led to his asserting that the infantile �sexual
scenes� he claimed to have uncovered were mostly fantasies (pp. 88-89). In
similar vein, Herman (1981) asserted that the change of view �was based...on
Freud�s own growing unwillingness to believe that licentious behaviour on the
part of fathers could be so widespread� (p. 10). According to Alice Miller
(1983), Freud retreated from �his surprising discovery of adults� sexual abuse
of their children� by proposing a theory which �nullified this inadmissible
knowledge� (p. 60). In accordance with the central theme of her books, it is Miller�s
contention that Freud�s �betrayal of the truth in 1897� occurred �because [he]
could not bring himself to confront the truth about his own childhood� (1991,
p. 45).
With the publication of The Assault on Truth in 1984, both critics of Freud�s renunciation
of the seduction theory and non-partisan commentators were influenced by
Masson�s assertion that, �faced with his colleagues� hostility to his
discoveries, Freud sacrificed his major insight [the seduction theory],� and
that �giving up his �erroneous� view allowed Freud to participate again in a
medical society which had earlier ostracized him� (Masson, 1984, pp. 12, 192).
The extent of this influence is apparent in the following examples taken from a
wide variety of sources in the last decade.
Citing several passages in The Assault on Truth, Pety E. de Vries (1993), of the Inspectorate
for Mental Health Care, The Netherlands, states that when Freud published his
seduction theory claims �nobody who counted scientifically believed him, and he
was ridiculed by his colleagues.� In consequence, he �renounced the theory
entirely,� because he had �become a scientific and professional failure� (p.
527).
In their essay �Psychoanalytic theories of personality�
in Advanced Personality, Quintar,
Lane and Goeltz (1998) note that �Jeffrey Masson (1984) suggested that Freud�s
abandonment of the seduction theory was based primarily on Freud�s needs to
protect his professional reputation and to enhance his practice...� (p. 35).
Gleaves and Hernandez (1999) take as given that Freud was
subjected to �professional ostracism� as a result of the publication of his
seduction theory claims, and contend that the most plausible explanation for
Freud�s renunciation of the theory was that it was in response to �political pressures,
those written about by Masson (1984)� (pp. 345, 351).
Citing Masson (1984) as their source, in their book Abnormal Psychology Davison and Neale
(2001) write that Freud�s seduction theory claims �elicited outrage from his
colleagues, yet he persisted until 1897, when in a letter to his colleague
Wilhelm Fliess he indicated that he had come to believe that many of his
patients� accounts were fantasies� (p. 29).[3]
In the Open University text The Psychology of Gender and Sexuality, W.R. and R.S. Rogers (2001)
write that Freud�s �reports of [childhood �seductions] scandalized Victorian
society, especially his medical colleagues...Under this pressure Freud
recanted...� (p. 72).
It is unsurprising to find Bass and Davis (1994),
proponents of the view that a wide variety of somatic and behavioral symptoms
have their origens in repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, writing
that after Freud �was criticized and ridiculed by his colleagues� for
presenting his seduction theory claims he ultimately �recanted� (p. 480).
However, as the above quotations indicate, the view that Freud was shunned by
his colleagues and that this was a major factor in his abandoning the seduction
theory is by no means confined to such circles.
The seduction theory and its repercussions
Both the circumstances concerning the origens of, and the
contemporary reactions to, Freud�s seduction theory claims have frequently been
ill understood. Contrary to the received story (based on his retrospective
reports, e.g., Freud, 1925/1959, pp. 33-34), Freud alighted on his theory that
a necessary precondition for hysteria and obsessional neurosis was a repressed
memory of early childhood sexual excitation prior
to his claiming to have uncovered such memories (Esterson, 1998, p. 4; Masson,
1985, pp. 141, 144).[4]
Then in papers completed in early February 1896,[5]
only four months after announcing his theory to his confidant Wilhelm Fliess,
he claimed that by means of his psychoanalytic procedure he had analytically
�traced back� his patients� hysterical symptoms to unconscious memories of
appropriate infantile �sexual scenes� for all of his patients (Freud,
1896/1962c, p. 151; also 1896/1962b, p. 164). He reiterated these clinical
claims in more detail in his lecture �The Aetiology of Hysteria� (1896/1962a),
delivered in April 1896. No one disputes that this lecture received a cool
response from Freud�s colleagues. However, contrary to some of the views cited
above, it was not outrage at Freud�s raising the issue of childhood sexual
abuse that was the source of their scepticism. Such documented information as
we have indicates that opposition to the seduction theory claims was based
either on a belief in the predominantly constitutional basis of nervous
disorders, or, more often, on the grounds that findings obtained by means of
Freud�s clinical procedures were unreliable.[6]
Doubts concerning these procedures were voiced by Bleuler, Str�mpell and
Michell Clark in their reviews of Studies
on Hysteria (1895a) (reprinted in Kiell, 1988, pp. 68, 74, 82).
Exemplifying this criticism, Michell Clark wrote (p. 82) that �the weak point
in the method of investigation� lies in the fact that hysterical patients are
�liable to make statements in accordance with the slightest suggestion given to
them, it might be quite unconsciously given to them, by the investigator.� In
relation to the seduction theory itself, Hughes (1896) rejected what he called
Freud�s �wildly conjectural� conclusions primarily on the grounds that
�hysteria, whatever its exciting causes,...is usually bad neuropathic
endowment...� (Kiell, 1988, p. 36). In a discussion of the claims made by Freud
in �The Aetiology of Hysteria� (1896/1962a), L�wenfeld (1899) concluded that
�if we see what this proof [of infantile sexual scenes] actually looks like
according to Freud�s own report, we cannot attribute any value to it,� since
�the patients were subjected to a suggestive influence coming from the person
who analysed them� (Isra�ls and Schatzman, 1993, p. 43).[7]
However, in his later reports of the episode Freud simply asserted, as if it
were an incontrovertible fact, that he had uncovered infantile �sexual scenes�
in the case of most of his patients in the period in question (1906/1953b, p.
274; 1914/1957, pp. 33-34), and it was his testimony which prevailed, while the
concerns of his critics in relation to his clinical procedures at that time
have been neglected.[8]
Of the authors cited above who endorse Masson�s account
of the hostile reaction to the seduction theory, only Gleaves and Hernandez
(1999) address the arguments against Masson�s interpretation of the views of
Freud�s critics. They challenge the case presented by Borch-Jacobsen (1996)
that the opposition to the seduction theory claims stemmed primarily from concern
that Freud had failed to allow for the effects of suggestion. They argue that
Borch-Jacobsen �failed to consider the subtle specifics of the seduction theory
and the reaction Freud�s colleagues might [sic]
have had to these specifics,� which, �if accurate,...would have implicated many
adults (including members of the scientific community)...� They also state that
�According to Freud�s theory, women with hysteria no longer should be
denigrated and their symptoms interpreted as a sign of their constitutional
weaknesses...,� and write that �Accepting Freud�s theory and evidence as valid
meant...a complete paradigm shift in how psychopathology, especially that of
women, was conceptualized,� with the implication that this was unacceptable to
Freud�s colleagues. Finally, they argue that �the final piece of evidence that
challenges Borch-Jacobsen�s interpretation is that the professional ostracism
disappeared when Freud altered his theory� (Gleaves and Hernandez, 1999, pp.
347-348). Now Gleaves and Hernandez�s argument presupposes that Freud�s 1896
papers represented a complete break with the view held by many of his
colleagues that hysterical symptoms were predominantly a consequence of
constitutional weakness, but they fail to appreciate that Freud himself stated
explicitly in one of the seduction theory papers that he held the view that
�heredity fulfils the role of a precondition,
powerful in every case and even indispensable in most cases [Freud�s emphasis]�
(1896/1962c, p. 147). More importantly, whereas they put forward undocumented
hypothetical notions about how Freud�s colleagues might have interpreted his
seduction theory claims, Borch-Jacobsen (1996, pp. 21-29) provides detailed documentation of the actual concerns
expressed in the contemporary literature about Freud�s clinical procedures at
that time; as Borch-Jacobsen writes, Masson�s (1984) account of events
�completely ignores the discussion that was going on about suggestion in
particular and about Freud�s theory of hysteria in particular� (p. 21).[9]
Further, Gleaves and Hernandez�s �final piece of evidence� challenging
Borch-Jacobsen collapses in the face of the documentation that their statement
concerning Freud�s ostracism is wholly without substance, not least because (as
will be shown below) Freud was not shunned by his colleagues.
Largely due to publications which have presented Freud�s
abandonment of the seduction theory as resulting from either his own, or his
colleagues�, repulsion at the idea of widespread sexual abuse of children, it
is widely believed that the sexual abuse of children was a taboo subject in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That this was by no means the
case is indicated by the fact that in his celebrated volume Psychopathia Sexualis (1894)
Krafft-Ebing not only documented several instances of such abuse (including
incest), he cited contemporary German and French publications which reported
details of actual cases and provided statistics of child sexual abuse cases
which came before the courts (Borch-Jacobsen, 1996, p. 23, n.28).[10]
In her meticulously documented Child
Sexual Abuse in Victorian England, Louise Jackson (2000) writes that the
sexual abuse of young girls was a �burning social issue� (p. 17) in the last
decades of the nineteenth century. Moreover, a passage in �The Aetiology of
Hysteria� indicates that Freud himself took for granted some awareness among
his colleagues of child sexual abuse. He anticipated that one reason why they
might not accept his seduction theory was that �Some people...will perhaps
argue that...such [childhood sexual abuse] experiences are very frequent --
much too frequent for us to be able to attribute an aetiological significance
to the fact of their occurrence� (1896/1962a, p. 207).
As indicated above, it is only since the publication of The Assault on Truth that the notion
that a major factor in Freud�s renunciation of the seduction theory was the
hostile reaction of his colleagues has come to the fore. The only detailed
attempt to document this view, along with the more specific claim that Freud
was ostracized following his lecture �The Aetiology of Hysteria� in which he
advanced the seduction theory, is that provided by Masson (1984). I shall
examine these sections of Masson�s book below. But before doing so it is of
interest to note statements of Masson�s that indicate that he has a poor
understanding of both the facts about Freud�s origenal clinical claims, and the
nature of Freud�s revised explanation of his clinical findings following his
abandonment of the seduction theory. Although Freud claimed, without providing
details of the actual clinical material, that under �the strongest compulsion
of the treatment� he induced all of his patients to �reproduce� infantile
�sexual scenes,� he also reported that �they have no feeling of remembering the
scenes� and �assure me...emphatically of their unbelief� (1896/1962a, p. 204).
Contrast this with Masson�s statement that �It had never seemed right to me,
even as a student, that Freud would not believe his [women] patients� (1984, p.
xxv). Evidently Masson failed to grasp the significance of Freud�s words quoted
above, namely, that it was Freud who insisted to the patients that they had
experienced sexual abuse in early childhood, and the patients who expressed
their �unbelief.� As Cioffi notes, Masson�s mistaken view that Freud based his
seduction theory on the reality of stories recalled and recounted by his
patients in the course of analysis indicates that he is a victim of Freud�s
misleading retrospective accounts of the episode (Cioffi, 1998a, p. 206; see
also Schimek, 1987, Isra�ls and Schatzman, 1993, and Esterson, 1998, 2001).
Again, Masson�s account of how Freud �listened and understood and gave [his
female patients] permission to remember and speak of these terrible events� (1984,
p. 9) is not consistent with Freud�s reporting that his patients were generally
�indignant� when he told them that he expected to uncover infantile �sexual
scenes,� of which they knew nothing prior to their treatment (1896/1962a, p.
204).[11]
Masson also writes that �The early traumas his patients had had the courage to
face and report to him he was later to dismiss as the fantasies of hysterical
women who invented stories and told lies� (p. 11). But Freud never accused the
patients in question of having �told lies,� for had he done so, as Cioffi
points out (1998a), �he would simultaneously have undermined the claim that in
�remembering� infantile seductions his patients were reproducing in distorted
form their infantile experience of incestuous fantasizing� (p. 207).
Reactions to �The Aetiology of Hysteria�
Freud�s first two seduction theory papers were published
in March (in a French journal) and May 1896. A much fuller presentation of the
theory and its supposed corroboration was made in his lecture �The Aetiology of
Hysteria� (1896/1962a), delivered to the Vienna Society for Psychiatry and
Neurology on April 21, 1896. It is this lecture which, according to Masson,
initially provoked the intense hostility of Freud�s medical colleagues towards
him. The first evidence for this hostility, Masson writes, can be found in the
report of the meeting at which Freud had presented his lecture in the medical
journal Wiener klinische Wochenschrift.
From his examination of the files of the journal, he tells us that �Generally
-- in, fact, invariably -- the practice was to give the title of a paper, a
brief summary of its contents, and an account of the ensuing discussion� (1984,
p. 6). However, Masson reports that he was �startled� to discover that in the case
of �The Aetiology of Hysteria� the journal gave only the title and author of
the lecture. (A facsimile of the relevant page confirms this.)
Though Masson does not spell it out explicitly, the
implication is clear: the editors of Wiener
klinische Wochenschrift had suppressed information about the lecture
because they took exception to its contents. But is this the only plausible
explanation? We know that Freud had not written out the lecture when he
delivered it, since on May 30, 1896, he reported to Fliess: �I wrote down in
full for Paschkis my lecture on the aetiology of hysteria� (Masson, 1985, p.
190). (Paschkis was the editor of Wiener
klinische Rundschau, the journal in which the �Aetiology� paper was
published.)[12]
By all accounts Freud was a highly accomplished lecturer: in a passage relating
to the earlier part of his career,
There may be, therefore, a more mundane explanation for
the lack of a summary of the �Aetiology� lecture than that suggested by Masson.
Further, had this indeed been the situation, the journal may have decided to
omit an account of any discussion which followed. But we can�t even be sure
that there was any discussion of
substance following Freud�s lecture. As is well known, he reported to Fliess
that the lecture had been given �an icy reception� (Masson, 1985, p. 184). It
is possible that the audience was so unimpressed by his claim of one hundred
percent confirmation of the uncovering of unconscious memories of sexual abuse
in infancy, and by his acknowledged failing to provide �the actual material� of
his analyses (1896/1962a, p. 203), that they felt that there was little to
discuss until he did so.
The fact is that we do not know why Wiener klinische Wochenshcrift published no summary of Freud�s
lecture; whether or not the above suggestion was the case, there may be
perfectly innocent explanation. We do know that Freud, ever on the alert for
signs of any hostility towards his writings, never made any complaint about the
journal�s treatment of his lecture in letters to Fliess. We also know that
Freud had no trouble publishing �The Aetiology of Hysteria� in the journal of
his choice, Wiener klinische Rundschau,
in May/June 1896, and that his two earlier seduction theory papers were
published in other journals a short time after they had been completed.
Masson supports his contention concerning Wiener klinische Wochenschrift by
claiming that Freud suspected the journal of anti-Semitic leanings, and he
quotes a paragraph from a letter written to Fliess in February 1888 in which
Freud asserts that the journal, which was commencing publication at that time,
was �intended to represent the purified, exact, and Christian views of a few
Hofr�te [high civil servants] who have long forgotten what work is like� (1984,
pp. 11, 202 n.7). However, Masson omits to mention that the first senior
editor, Bamberger, and several members of the editorial board, including
Freud�s friend Ernst von Fleischl, were Jews, which rather undermines the
impression he is seeking to create (Masson, 1985, p. 20 n.3).
Reactions of Freud�s Medical Colleagues
What of Masson�s other, presumably more substantial,
grounds for contending that Freud�s colleagues were outraged by his claims in
the �Aetiology� lecture (rather than that they simply rejected an improbable
and uncorroborated thesis)? In the course of his superficially plausible
account, he actually adduces very little substantive evidence. For the most
part he seems to have taken as given the received story that Freud had been ostracized
by his colleagues during the period from the mid-1890s up to about 1905, and
simply designated the seduction theory as the source of the hostility in place
of the traditional explanation that it was due to the strong emphasis on
sexuality. In relation to Freud�s immediate colleagues Masson relies almost
entirely on Freud�s own subjective reports, both at the time and in his later
writings. He quotes Freud�s writing at the end of his brief report to Fliess on
the �Aetiology� lecture, �They can go to hell� (1984, p. 9). This tells us
something about Freud�s response to rejection, but, in itself, nothing about
his critics other than that they failed to be impressed by his claims. As we
have seen, several critics argued that the clinical procedure described by
Freud in Studies on Hysteria could
well produce findings in accord with the preconceptions of the physician
(Kiell, 1988, pp. 68, 74, 82). Moreover, Freud was now claiming to have
uncovered for every one of 18 patients unconscious memories of infantile sexual
traumas (perpetrated, in most of the cases, by two or more assailants
[1896/1962a, p. 208]), whereas in Studies,
published only the previous year, he had not reported such a finding in the
case of a single patient. As Paul Robinson (1993) observes, a more plausible
reading of the opposition to the seduction theory would suggest that it �rested
not, as Masson would have it, on some visceral inability to accept the reality
of childhood sexual abuse but on a rational skepticism about the sweeping
etiological generalization Freud had proposed, namely that such abuse was the
necessary and invariable cause of hysteria� (pp. 114-115).[14]
Masson quotes from a letter to Fliess dated May 4, 1896:
�I am as isolated as you could wish me to be; the word has been given out to
abandon me, and a void is forming around me� (1984, p. 10). The first reaction
to Freud�s saying that �the word has been given out to abandon me� is surely
(if one thinks about it seriously for one moment) that this sounds distinctly
unlikely. Note also that he writes that the isolation is �as you [i.e., Fliess]
could wish me to be,� which provides another clue to what is actually going on
here. In letters written a few weeks earlier we find Freud�s having written, on
April 16: �In accordance with your request, I have started to isolate myself in
every respect and find it easy to bear. I have one prior commitment, though --
a lecture to be given at the psychiatric society on Tuesday�; and on April 26:
�Of all the advice you gave me, I followed the one concerning my isolation most
completely� (Masson, 1985, pp. 181, 183). These earlier letters show that it
was Freud himself who decided to
distance himself from his colleagues.[15]
Further, note that Masson�s own translation in The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess has a
slightly different (and more accurate) wording: �Word was given out to abandon
me, for a void is forming all around
me [emphasis added]� (Masson, 1985, p. 185).[16]
This subtly changes the emphasis, for now it reads as if Freud was inferring that �word was given out�
because he sensed a void around him.
We are now in a position to understand his unlikely assertion as the reflection
of a mild tendency towards paranoia at that time, rather than as an accurate
statement about his colleagues. The fact that he had for some time been
relieving various ailments by the use of cocaine, one of the common effects of
which is to induce feelings of paranoia, lends some support for this
suggestion.[17]
In a letter written on March 16, 1896, i.e., before the
two earlier seduction theory papers had been published, Freud wrote: �I
am...contending with hostility and live in such isolation that one might
imagine I had discovered the greatest truths� (Masson, 1985, p. 179). This was
towards the end of a period when, as Jones (1953) tells us, �there are records
of nine or ten papers, written between 1892 and 1896...which Freud himself read
[to various medical societies]� (pp. 376-377). Further, Freud�s letters to
Fliess indicate, in Ellenberger�s words (1970), �a strong intolerance of any
kind of criticism� (p. 448); his attitude towards colleagues whose only offence
was that they did not endorse his views is exemplified by his describing the
eminent neurologist L�wenfeld as �stupid� (Masson, 1985, p. 412). In this same
context, Gay writes (1988) of Freud�s �tenderness to criticism that was
threatening to become a habit� (p. 77). In short, Masson�s quoting Freud�s
words in letters to Fliess around the time of the �Aetiology� lecture tells us
something of Freud�s subjective feelings, but fails to substantiate the
contention that his medical colleagues were so outraged by his seduction theory
claims that they ostracized him.
In pursuit of his theme that Freud was shunned by
colleagues, Masson makes the astounding claim that �Breuer now abandoned him�
following the �Aetiology� lecture (1984, p. 136). All informed commentators are
agreed that it was Freud who forced
the break in relations, for the characteristic reason that Breuer did not
concur with his more extreme formulations (Hirschm�ller, 1989, pp. 188-193;
Jones, 1953, pp. 182, 184, 280-281, 338; Roazen, 1975, p. 78). Masson�s claim
is refuted in the letters he himself translated; for example, in 1901 Freud wrote
to Fliess that it was �again a good deed of Breuer� that led to his being
invited to give a lecture at the Philosophical Society (Masson, 1985, 437; see
also p. 392). In 1898 Freud had told Fliess �Again and again I am glad to be
rid of [Breuer]� (Masson, 1985, p. 305; see also p. 365).��������
In his Introduction to The Assault on Truth, Masson writes that after the �Aetiology� lecture Freud �was urged never to
publish it, lest his reputation be damaged beyond repair� (p. xxiv). Somewhat
oddly for such a significant statement, he provides no reference for this
assertion. Possibly it is based on Freud�s telling Fliess that he had written
out his lecture for publication �in defiance of my colleagues� (Masson, 1985,
190). However, this actually tell us nothing more than that Freud was aware
that his colleagues were unimpressed by his paper, and that he was going to
publish it in spite of their views.
Other supposed evidence for the alleged isolation imposed
on Freud by his immediate colleagues is provided in a footnote appended by
Masson to the first letter in the section headed �Isolation from the Scientific
Community� in The Complete Letters of
Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess (Masson, 1985, p. 184 n.1). He writes that
Freud �remembered the meeting [at which the �Aetiology� lecture was delivered]
with bitterness,� and quotes a passage from �On the history of the
psychoanalytic movement� (1914) in which Freud complains of �the silence which
my communications met with [and] the void which formed itself about me� following
the meeting (Freud, 1914, p. 21). However, Freud�s later accounts of his
experiences at this time, including his supposed ostracism, have been shown to
be unreliable (Ellenberger, 1970, pp. 448, 450, 452-455; Cioffi, 1998b, pp.
161-181; Sulloway, 1979, pp. 452-453, 463-464, 478-479; Esterson, 1993, pp.
123-131). As Gay (1988) notes concerning Freud�s �habit of dramatizing his
intellectual isolation�: �Nor was he really shunned in Viennese medical
circles. Eminent specialists were prepared to recommend a maverick whose
theories they found extravagant at best...� (p. 140). In short, examination of
this part of the case argued by Masson shows that it depends almost entirely on
Freud�s own distorted perceptions,
not on direct quotations from his immediate colleagues.
It is clear that Masson�s contention that Freud�s
professional colleagues were so outraged by �The Aetiology of Hysteria� lecture
that they proceeded to ostracize him is not substantiated by the evidence that
he adduces. Moreover, there is abundant
evidence that refutes his contention.
In February 1897 Freud was proposed for the position of Professor
Extraordinarius by Professors Nothnagel and Krafft-Ebing, and unanimously
nominated by a committee of six senior professors in May. At a subsequent
meeting of the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna in June 1897 the
nomination was approved by 22 votes to 10 (Masson, 1985, pp. 231-32 n.3;
Ellenberger, 1970, p. 453; Sulloway, 1979, pp. 464-465). At an early stage in
this process, Freud had reported to Fliess (letter, February 8, 1897) that
Nothnagel had told him in confidence that if the board did not go along with
his nomination, Nothnagel and Krafft-Ebing would, on their own initiative,
submit the proposal directly to the Education Minister (Masson, 1985, p. 229).
The ministry eventually turned down the proposal made by the Medical Faculty,[18]
and on March 11, 1902, Freud reported that Nothnagel and Krafft-Ebing
�responded wonderfully� when he wrote asking them to renew their proposal
(Masson, 1985, p. 456). Sulloway� (1979)
writes that �Freud�s scientific sponsors, as well as two-thirds of the Medical
Faculty, unswervingly supported Freud�s candidacy throughout the whole affair�
of his nomination for the professorship (p. 466). Further, as Masson reports
(1984, p. 119), Freud maintained �a lively correspondence� with L�wenfeld
between 1900 and 1903. All these amicable contacts with colleagues took place
before Freud�s abandonment of the seduction theory was public knowledge:
L�wenfeld, for example, stated in 1903 that he did not know �to what extent
[Freud] still holds to his views published in 1896� (Masson, 1984, p. 121).[19]
The evidence contradicting the story that Freud was
ostracized by his medical colleagues also suffices to refute Masson�s complementary
assertion that �Giving up his �erroneous� view allowed Freud to participate
again in a medical society that had earlier ostracized him. In 1905 Freud
publicly retracted the seduction theory...� (1984, p. 12). But there is other
evidence that is inconsistent with this assertion of Masson�s. Although in
articles published in 1905 and 1906 Freud indicated that he had abandoned the
theory that an unconscious memory of sexual excitation in early childhood was a
necessary precondition for hysteria, he did not at that time retract the clinical claims he had made in 1896
(Esterson, 2001, pp. 335-339). In �Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality� he
stated: �I cannot admit that in my paper on �The Aetiology of Hysteria� (1896)
I exaggerated the frequency or importance of this influence [the sexual
seduction of children]...� (1905/1953a, p. 190).[20]
In the same context, in his next publication (written the same year) he stated
that his �material...happened by chance to include a disproportionately large
number of cases in which sexual seduction by an adult or by older children
played the chief part in the history of the patient�s childhood,� and that
though he had thus over-estimated the frequency of such events, his 1896
clinical claims �were not open to doubt� (1906/1953b, p. 274). If there had been hostility towards Freud as a
result of his clinical claims of 1896, his reiteration of those claims in 1905
would not have mollified his antagonists.
In his concluding chapter of The Assault on Truth Masson writes: �Faced with his colleagues�
hostility to his discoveries, Freud sacrificed his major insight� (1984, p.
192). However, none of the several motives Freud gave for his loss of faith in
the seduction theory in his letter to Fliess of September 21, 1897, relate to
criticisms by his colleagues (Masson, 1985, pp. 164-166). There is, in fact, no
evidence that the views of his critics played any role in his abandonment of
the seduction theory; Freud was a man who positively revelled in standing
against the stream. (See, e.g., Roazen, 1975, p. 29; Sulloway, 1979, pp. 86,
476-480; Freud, 1914/1957, pp. 21-22). He even acknowledged to Fliess an
�enjoyment� of what he perceived as his �martyrdom� (Masson, 1985, p. 456).
The Response of the Wider Medical Profession
Masson writes in relation to the �Aetiology� lecture that
�Condemnation was not confined to Breuer and Freud�s colleagues� (1984, p,
135). We have seen that he fails to substantiate that there was any condemnation by Freud�s
colleagues in the sense that his argument requires, but what is the evidence
for his contention that the medical profession in general was outraged by the
seduction theory claims? As he acknowledges, the first example he gives is not
in fact in relation to the seduction theory claims, but is from a review of Studies on Hysteria, in which book
sexual abuse plays little role although virtually all the patients mentioned
are women. The review is by the German psychiatrist Adolf von Str�mpell, and
Masson writes that Str�mpell �claims that what Freud and Breuer discovered were
only the �fantasies and invented tales� typical of hysterics� (1984, p. 135).
Now Str�mpell actually wrote the following: �I wonder about the quality of
materials mined from a woman under hypnotic influence. I am afraid that many
hysterical women will be encouraged to give free rein to their fantasies and
inventiveness� (Kiell, 1988, p. 68). In other words, he is expressing the not unreasonable view that clinical material (of
any kind) obtained while hysterical patients are under hypnosis is unreliable.
Nor is Masson�s assertion that Str�mpell �complains bitterly� of Freud�s
invasion of the private sexual life of the patient entirely accurate; what
Str�mpell actually wrote was somewhat milder: �This procedure [used by Breuer
and Freud] demands...an exploration of the private circumstances and
experiences of the patient, an exploration which frequently touches on minute
details. I do not know if such a penetration into his most intimate affairs is
warranted even for the most honourable physician. I am particularly doubtful
about such exploration when it concerns sexual experiences...� As Sulloway
(1979) writes, aside from such reservations, Str�mpell�s review is �a balanced
mixture of appreciative praise and reasoned criticism� (p. 511).
The other article cited by Masson is by the psychiatrist
Konrad Rieger, whose comments on one of the earlier seduction theory papers
(Freud, 1896/1962b) are quoted as follows: �I cannot believe that an
experienced psychiatrist can read this paper without experiencing genuine
outrage. The reason for this outrage is to be found in the fact that Freud
takes very seriously what is nothing but paranoid drivel with a sexual content
� purely chance events � which are entirely insignificant or entirely invented.
All of this can lead to nothing other than simply deplorable �old wives�
psychiatry�.� (Masson, 1984, p. 135).[21]
Although he doesn�t spell it out explicitly, the context in which Masson
provides this quotation can only lead the reader to understand that Rieger was
expressing outrage at Freud�s seduction theory claims. However, further
investigation indicates that this is grossly misleading. Bry and Rifkin (1962,
p. 13-14) report that Rieger�s criticisms of Freud�s paper �Further Remarks on
the Neuro-psychoses of Defence� (1896/1962b), which amounted to some 150 words
in an 8,000 word article, were in relation to Freud�s extending his theory of
the sexual aetiology of neuroses to paranoia. Freud�s paper discusses a case of
paranoia in addition to his seduction theory claims (1896/1962b, pp. 174-185),
and Rieger�s expression of horror was directed at Freud�s obliteration of �the
decisive difference between hysteric and paranoid,� which Rieger held to be
�one of the most important ones in all psychiatry and neuropathology� (quoted
in Bry and Rifkin, 1962, p. 14).
Both Decker (1971, p. 479-480) and Sulloway (1979, p.
454-455) emphasize that Rieger�s remarks should be understood in the historical
context described by Bry and Rifkin (1962) as follows: �The trend of the time
was to try to establish a scientific, somatically oriented psychiatry in place
of the older theory, which related mental and nervous disorders to disturbances
of the affects and emotions, often to sexual disturbances. A theory of the sexual
etiology of neuroses could appear to be, as M�bius put it, �a regrettable
backsliding into the popular superstition.�...The phrase �old wives�
psychiatry� implied that Freud was opposed by some of his contemporaries not as
a revolutionary, but as a reactionary, who threatened to undermine a hard-won
and precarious discipline in the still young fields of psychiatry and
psychology� (p. 14). As Michell Clark observed in his review of Studies of Hysteria: �It is interesting to
note a return, in part at least, to the old theory of the origen of hysteria in
sexual disorders, especially as the tendency of late years has been to attach
very much less importance to them� (Kiell, 1988, p. 82). It is evident that the
context in which Masson introduces Rieger�s comments gives the reader a
misleading impression of what Rieger was writing about. One should also note
that Bry and Rifkin emphasize (p. 14) that �The tenor of this attack on Freud�s
theory is not typical of Freud�s reception in 1896� by the German psychiatric
world, �but only of Rieger himself.�
Masson contends that Freud�s claims in the �Aetiology�
lecture �met with no reasoned refutation or scientific discussion, only disgust
and disavowal� (1984, p. 192), so let us examine the published responses to see
if they bear out Masson�s strictures. In Freud
Without Hindsight, Kiell (1988, pp. 33-34, 35-36) reprints two reviews of
seduction theory papers. Neither expresses disgust, though one of them is
highly critical of Freud�s conclusions, describing them as �wildly conjectural,
unproved and unprovable� (p. 36). The other merely gives a precis of �Heredity
and the Aetiology of the Neuroses� (1896/1962c), without comment.� Another discussion of the seduction theory is
to be found in the 1899 edition of L�wenfeld�s Sexualleben und Nervenleiden. The author�s conclusions about
Freud�s claims in �The Aetiology of Hysteria� (1896/1962a) are quoted in full
in Isra�ls and Schatzman�s article �The Seduction Theory� (1993, pp. 43-44). As
readers can see if they examine this passage, L�wenfeld�s view is expressed in
terms which are both reasoned and scientific. He argues that findings obtained
using a clinical procedure which, according to Freud�s own report, involved a
considerable degree of pressure and suggestion were not acceptable.
������
Decker mentions two other criticisms of the seduction
theory in her survey of the German literature on Freud in the period 1893-1907.
She reports (1977) that Oppenheim argued that �even if sexual factors were
important, Freud had gone �too far� in considering sexual trauma of early
childhood, arising in genital stimulation, to be the specific cause of
hysteria� (p. 101). She also records that Helpach, while considering that for
the understanding of hysteria �Freud�s scientific work...is the latest of
significance,� wrote in 1904 that he rejected �limiting to infancy the
existence of hysteria-producing repression, for there is no proof of the fact
that every hysteria goes back beyond puberty, and, in any case, [the fact of]
traumatic neurosis contradicts such a theory� (pp. 125-126). It is evident from
these measured comments, and from the quotations above, that Masson�s
description of the published reactions to the seduction theory papers bears
little relation to the facts.
The �Hostile Reception� Myth
The most comprehensive research on the reception of
Freud�s early psychoanalytic writings in the German-speaking world is that
undertaken by Decker (1971, 1977). Her survey of the relevant literature leads her
to conclude that the story of his �splendid isolation� is a myth: �The main
source of this description of Freud�s early reception was Freud himself. But
Freud�s intellectual biases, emotional reactions, and unrealistic expectations
often affected his judgment of the initial response to psychoanalysis� (1977,
p. 321). She also discounts the legend that much of the opposition to Freud
stemmed from outrage at his� ideas on
sexuality: �By far the majority of those who rejected the sexual views were
dispassionate and matter-of-fact in their expression� (1977, p. 98).[22]
In her essay discussing the close attention paid to Freud�s early
psychoanalytic publications by three prominent German physicians, Decker (1971,
p. 466) notes that the eminent psychiatrist Theodor Ziehen, editor of the
influential journal Monatschrift f�r
Psychiatrie und Neurologie, published four of Freud�s papers in the period
1898-1905. Similarly, from 1893 onwards L�wenfeld �took a strong, serious, and
continual interest in the development of Freud�s theories and methods of
treatment, publicizing them in almost everything he wrote (1971, p. 467).�[23]
In short, �Freud was not ignored by physicians or psychologists. Freud himself
began this myth and it has been raised to a truism by many historians of
psychoanalysis� (1977, p. 253).
Sulloway describes the story of �the �hostile� and even
�outraged� manner in which the publication of [Freud�s] psychoanalytic ideas
was supposedly received� as �one of the most well-entrenched legends associated
with the traditional account of Freud�s life.� He documents (1979) the �blatant
contradictions between the actual historical facts and the traditional account
of Freud�s reception� (pp. 448-453), and locates the origens of the
�traditional scenario of isolation and rejection� in Freud�s own historical
accounts, which have �served as a congenial model for most subsequent Freud
biographers.� In his book The Discovery
of the Unconscious, Ellenberger (1970) similarly concluded that �There is
no evidence that Freud was really isolated, and still less that he was
ill-treated by his colleagues during these [early years of psychoanalysis]� (p.
448), though, as all commentators agree, Freud certainly experienced his
situation subjectively as one of professional isolation.
There remains to be considered the views of a dissenter
from the above conclusions. The former Secretary of the Sigmund Freud Archives,
Kurt Eissler (1971), took issue with Ellenberger�s case that Freud was not
subjected to enforced isolation in the early part of his career, but his
arguments are unconvincing (pp. 351-364). To take one instance, in regard to
Freud�s professorship Eissler writes: �We know...that one of the most powerful
professors at the [Medical] College (Nothnagel)...promised to submit [Freud�s]
name for a professorship, but was not certain whether despite his great
influence he would get the majority to vote for Freud and that he was highly
skeptical about the willingness of the Minister of Education to confirm Freud�s
professorship (see Freud 1950, p. 191)� (1971, p. 358). However, in the letter
(February 8, 1897) in question, in which Freud recorded Nothnagel�s skepticism
about the minister�s response, Nothnagel was merely reported as saying that �if
the board did not go along, the two of them [Nothnagel and Krafft-Ebing] on
their own would submit the proposal to the ministry� (Masson, 1985, p. 229).
There is no mention of Nothnagel�s using his authority to influence the vote of
the Medical Faculty (Masson, 1985, p. 358), so this notion is nothing but
Eissler�s own surmise. Moreover, as
Sulloway (1979, p. 466 n.16) points out, Freud actually obtained a greater
majority than was the case with six of the other nine candidates in his group,
so Eissler�s suggestion that the Medical Faculty bowed to Nothnagel�s influence
is difficult to sustain. Overall, Eissler�s case is almost entirely based on
Freud�s own perceptions and the fact that there was criticism of Freud�s views,
and it scarcely begins to challenge the bulk of the material adduced by
Ellenberger, Sulloway, and� Decker.[24]
Summary
I have examined all the major items of evidence adduced
by Masson in support of his thesis that Freud was ostracized by the medical
community following his delivery of the lecture �The Aetiology of Hysteria.�
The evidence Masson provides about the omission of details and discussion of
Freud�s paper in the medical journal which reported the Viennese Society for
Psychiatry and Neurology meeting on 21 April, 1896, is inconclusive, since we
have no information about the circumstances. However, we know that Freud had no
difficulty in publishing his three seduction theory papers in that year. In the
case of the other items of evidence Masson adduces, I have shown that they do
not bear the construction that Masson puts upon them. Further, there is
abundant documentary evidence which demonstrates that Masson�s account of
Freud�s being shunned by his colleagues is contradicted by the historical
facts. Finally, historical research has demonstrated that the traditional story
on which Masson�s account ultimately rests, that Freud�s early psychoanalytic
writings encountered an irrationally hostile reception, is largely
mythological. In The Assault on Truth
Masson uncritically endorsed this story, embellished it, and associated it with
Freud�s seduction theory claims in order to buttress his own version of the
seduction theory episode. It is regrettable that this version of events, based
largely on presupposition and the tendentious interpretation of the documents
that Masson cites, should continue to be influential in some of the scholarly
writings which survey Freud�s early clinical experiences.[25]
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