"Psychiatry, psychoanalysis- the fakest professions"

By Syed M. Aslam

Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson has written a number of angriest books ever that convincingly argue that psychiatry and psychoanalysis being the fakest professions in the world need to be abolished. Dr. Jeffrey, who earned B.A and did Ph.D. with Honours from the Harvard University and a practicing psychoanalyst himself, was dismissed from his position as project director of the Freud Archives and stripped of his membership in psychoanalytic professional societies in 1981 for his controversial conclusions discussed in a series of New York Times articles by Ralph Blumenthal, to the dismay of the psychoanalytic establishment.. A little while later he announced not to "˜psychoanalysis' anymore to prove he meant what he had written.

Masson's rise, and subsequent self-chosen fall, begun while he was studying to become a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, in 1978 when he befriended psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler and got acquainted with Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, on whom he later became to be known as "˜authority'. In 1980 Masson was appointed Projects Director of the Freud Archives, with full access to Freud's correspondence and other unpublished papers. While perusing the materials that he now had access to Masson reached a conclusion that Freud had rejected the seduction theory in his later years primarily to advance the cause of psychoanalysis and to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle. In 1985, Masson edited and translated the complete correspondence of Freud with Wilhelm Fliess in 1985. Wilhelm, a German otolaryngologist (the branch of medicine that specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of ear, nose, throat, and head and neck disorders) had attended several conferences of Sigmund Freud in 1887 in Vienna , and the two were good friends. Through their extensive correspondence and a series of personal meetings, called "congresses" by Freud, Fliess played an important role in the development of psychoanalysis, as it is called today.

 
Masson later wrote several extremely critically acclaimed books on psychiatry and psychoanalysis including "The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory" and "Freud and the Seduction Theory A challenge to the foundations of psychoanalysis" both published in 1984 and "Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing" (1988). The books made strong ripples in the circles where it mattered and attacked the very foundations of modern psychotherapy from such greats as Freud, Carl Jung, Fritz Perls and Carl Rodgers, around whom modern psychology is based, and without whom it would lose all its credibility.

His hard hitting and no-hold barred book, Against Therapy, highlighted profession's flaws saying that since therapy's claim of changing people is achieved through therapist's own notions and prejudices, the psychological process has to be corrupt to start with. Against Therapy shattered many a self-claim and self-achieved myths of psychiatry and psychoanalysis and in the process dented for good its claim of being a "genuine, honest and clean" profession. Masson, being an "˜insider', forcefully and convincingly denounced barbaric practices of therapy, accorded the status as if it is at par with and science and conducted for the love and good of a exploited, and at times tortured, patient not with complete impunity but also under the very protection of the law.

He challenged the power differential between therapist and patient- the former always considered as a person who knows it all, is sane, absolutely ethical and without any problems whatsoever and the later always crazy, infantile, incapable of least understanding and what-not. Masson not only questioned the definition of "˜crazy' but also what is considered "crazy". He also challenged all who has the power to create such definitions.

In "Against Therapy" Masson says that Freud initially listened to his "˜voluntary' patients, almost all women, and also accepted their viewpoints, but allowed professional pressures influence his interpretations of their tales later. The deliberately misinterpreting of his patient's stories of sexual abuse as fantasies proves that Freud was callous at the expense of powerless female patients.

Masson also criticizes Freud's much loved disciple, Sándor Ferenczi, although not as severely for things he said to his patients according to his diary. Masson believe that if he would have lived long enough Ferenczi might had realized the basic illegitimacy of psychiatry.

Masson criticizes Carl Jung for not being interested in patients' pasts, but in dreams, to which he ascribed predictive qualities. Masson suspects that Jung's disinterest in the past was related to his need to forget his own past of alleged collaboration with the Nazis.

About John Rosen, the inventor of "Direct Psychoanalysis" Masson says that he never had any psychoanalytic training. Masson also describes in detail numerous gross abuses of patients by him that compelled him to surrender his medical license in 1983.
Masson called Carl Rogers, the founder of Humanistic Psychology, kind and benevolent but added that no matter how benevolent a despot is a despot. He also accuses Rogers guilty of not actively interfering with psychiatric abuses that he saw and knew about. Masson annoyed the lucrative mental health industry of America , and elsewhere, by highlighting the corrupt and collusive nexus of mental health institutions and academia. His book "Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst" (published 1990) thoroughly exposed the corruption at every level of the extremely rich and powerful psychoanalytic industry.

Having forced to abandon his career for writing such angry books that shook the very foundation of psychiatry and psychoanalysis and exposing the pillars of its very justification for existence Masson stopped writing about any theme no matter how distantly related it is to psychiatry. "I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry"¦. 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. "˜"Since the early 1990s has written a number of books on the emotional life of animals, one of which, When Elephants Weep, has been translated into 20 languages.

Masson has also written a book about his new home country New Zealand, that includes an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand mountaineer and explorer who along with fellow mountaineer, Tenzing Norgay, and a Sherpa became one of the first climbers to have reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 29 1953 at the age of 33. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand .

Syed M. Aslam is APNS Award-winning English language Pakistani print journalist. He could be contacted at smaslam1@yahoo.com

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