Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of a Psychoanalyst

by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

He was the rising star of psychoanalysis, an intimate associate of Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler, a member of the Freudian “inner circle” with unrestricted access to the Freud Archives. And then Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson threw it all away because he dared to break the psychoanalytic community’s deepest he told the truth in public. As he unmasks the pretensions and abuses of this elite profession, Masson invites us to eavesdrop on the shockingly unorthodox analysis he was subjected to in the course of his analytic training. But the more prestige Masson attained, the more he came to doubt not only the integrity of his colleagues, but the validity of their method. In the end, he blew the whistle–fully aware of the personal and professional consequences.

With wit, wonder, and unflinching candor, Masson brilliantly exposes the cult of psychoanalysis and recounts his own self-propelled fall from grace. A sensation when it first appeared, Final Analysis is even more provocative and engrossing today. Written with passion and humor, this is the book that revealed a revered profession for what it was–and launched Masson on his true career.

Genres: Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Autobiography, Biography Memoir

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

He has written several books books critical of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychiatry as well as books on animals, their emotions and their rights.

He currently lives in New Zealand with his wife, two sons, three cats and three rats.

Reviews

[Erica Verrillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

It might come as a shock to some readers to discover what goes on in the dark halls of psychoanalysis, but anyone with long experience in psychology will feel thoroughly vindicated after reading Final Analysis. Dr. Masson, a highly trained practitioner, is certainly not the first to point out that psychoanalysts (and psychiatrists) are a cult. The only reason we don't hear more from those members who have been "defrocked," as Peter Breggin puts it, is that, like a cult, its adherents still worship the "master" even after they've left the sphere of his control.

The "master", of course, is Sigmund Freud, a man who referred to psychoanalysis as "die Sache" ("the cause") and garnered unquestioning loyalty among his disciples. The profound secrecy which characterized the workings of the inner circle, a select group to whom Freud gave engraved rings in a rather Tolkeinesque gesture, is something that has been perpetuated to this day. The machinations, jealousies and utter irrationality (how ironic!) of this small coterie makes for some fascinating reading, as does the account of Dr. Masson's encounters with Freud's heir and devotee, his daughter Anna.

I think that what impressed me most about this memoir was not Masson's meteoric fall from grace--somewhat like Icarus, he flew too near the sun--but his candid description of Anna Freud. This was a woman who was clearly obsessed with her father. Anna, a woman who "gave off an aura of physical coldness," never married or had children. When her father lay dying of cancer, she replaced her mother in Freud's sickroom, becoming, in effect, his surrogate wife. The fact that Freud psychoanalyzed Anna accentuates the strangeness of their relationship. (Imagine spending an hour every day describing your sexual fantasies to your father, and having him analyze them. Perhaps there was a good reason why the seventy-year-old Anna kept her bedroom filled with stuffed animals.) Unfortunately, the unnaturalness of Freud's family relations not only permeated Freud's life and writing, but infused itself into the entire belief system that is Freud's legacy.

After reading Dr. Masson's account, I would like to believe that psychoanalysis is on its way out. After a century of causing untold harm to thousands of women (including Marilyn Monroe) it deserves to fade into obscurity--along with EST and Primal Scream and all the other psych fads. Given the broad array of mental health practitioners nowadays, there is certainly more of a choice as to what kind of therapy a person can seek. Unfortunately, the idea that it's "all in your head" is one that persists, and desperate, despairing people who seek help are still regularly mistreated, ignored and dismissed by those who should know better.

[Lore LongSoulSystem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Va para las mejores lecturas de este año. ¿Cómo es que no había leído este aún? Y yo pensaba dejarlo como un libro secundario a asalto a la verdad. Este tiene otro tipo de verdad subjetiva con la que me he sentido vista e identificada, habiendo pasado también por círculos psicoanalíticos y su adoctrinamiento.

[Gregcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oof, this was really a tough one. Let me just start with a fact that my life goal is to become a psychoanalyst. It is something I really am very passionate about. So the first time I saw this book I hated it, I hated the idea of it and I was very afraid that it was going to make me have doubts about my future job or my investment in psychoanalysis. But the more I got into it, the more I liked it.

When he started the book with his conversation with psychoanalyst for application into college he didn't know what to answer to: 'Why do you want to apply? Why do you want to become a psychoanalyst?" The way he thought in his head, that he JUST wanted to change his job made me feel grossed out to be honest. I was being hateful towards the author but that was because I was afraid of what I said before, that I was gonna have doubts about the job itself.

BUT! When he started telling the story when he got accepted... That was something totally different and I truly didn't see it coming. The treatment of his egocentric psychoanalyst was crazy to read, the mentality and the way that people thought and treated Freud's theories as godlike was really out of this world. Back in time 99 % of psychoanalysts just agreed with whatever Freud said, without any critic, if someone (that someone would be the author) would say anything against him, he would be judged and dissmised.

This book is partly relevant to what it is like today. I understand the author's concerns and disagreements. I felt him. I understood him. I know he had a very bad experience in this world of psychoanalysis but his point, that he doesn't suggest it to anyone, whether someone who wants to get educated in this way or being treated by it is just not right because those were different times and I do believe we learned a lot from this sad history.

It was a good read after all, I enjoyed it, it was more or less easy to understand. In my language translation there were also some typos which bothered me a little.

[Harris Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

insightful and unsparing.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who’s undergone a 10 year psychoanalysis and had some involvement with classes at the LA Psychoanalytic Institute, I found the beginnings of the book very compelling. His treatment, as he underwent psychoanalysis was indeed disturbing. The lack of freedom for the candidates to make changes, created an impossible situation for growth. I’m of the opinion that 80% of the person’s success in any kind of therapy has a lot to do with how the therapy is provided.

The institutes are indeed often a hub for return to a culture that is not often evident in the US. Many of the interactions that go on there, seemed quite stuffy.

The writers descriptions of his time in Europe were probably much more fascinating to him than they were to the reader. Sure, meeting Anna Freud is something that few people can claim.

I certainly understood his anger and upset in the last parts of the book. It is so hard when there are new or even old new information that goes against the grain. His grudge, though, made the way he went about promoting his findings very difficult. The book seems to have a very vindictive tone.

Learning new things and new ways is hard. And I think it’s particularly hard for people who feel steeped in tradition. I remember my analyst struggling with manage care and the need for providers to have authorization, which insurance companies making decisions I will have how long therapy should continue. For a profession that believes in multi year and multi days a week to be directed by insurance companies to terminate after seven sessions is an enigma. Like the writer, this was something unfathomable by analysts. Only those who had an active practice of very wealthy people were likely to be able to maintain a fully analytic practice.

I am happy at the end of the book to hear that he found a cause that he loved – – animals.

Just out of curiosity; I wonder if his marriage survived.

[Tessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly interesting and some important points. His own experience of analysis was frankly abusive, and the difficulty of extricating from this given the power involved is a clear and compelling warning - not only for therapists regarding ethical practice, but as a call to scrutinise the schools of thought and power structures of therapy more broadly.

I was disappointed that his conclusion was that therapy cannot be helpful; that nothing changes people short of falling in love (ironic, given his discussion of patients falling in love with him). The very tools that Masson rejects are crucial for the work. For all the proliferation of modalities today, attempting to do trauma work without considering transference (+CT), attachment dynamics, enactments, etc., seems like a recipe for disaster. (Don't get me wrong, I'm all for giving up a lot of the dogma of psychoanalysis, or at very least mining it for what's parsimonious and aligns with clinical experience). I understand why his experiences would lead him to try to protect others from going through the same, it's just sad that he rules out the reality of genuinely skilled practitioners who, with deep integrity and humanity, help people in fairly profound ways.

Aside from this (can they be separated?) his work on bringing to light Freud's turning away from the realities of childhood abuse was pivotal, and interesting to read some of the politics of it all.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 1 out of 5]

Masson's hate for psychoanalysis makes him postulate that empathy and true understanding for the other is impossible. That has to be one of the most depressing things I've ever read.

Now, his critique of the psychoanalytic instituion is pertinent, but just because it is corrupt (like almost all social spheres under capitalism) it doesn't mean the theory is wrong. If we go by that same argument, then astronomy, History, math, biology, physics, etc. are completely wrong because the institutions and people that teach it (and profit with them) are corrupt / wrong / alienated, but as we know, that ain't the case: one thing is the power structure and another the epistemic one. And of course they interact and sometimes determine each other, but in psychoanalysis specifically it doesn't happen as Masson thinks it does.

Even ideology has deep in its core truth concealed.

[Rachel]

Read in 1996. My review from then: An inside look at a boys' club that is even more screwed up than I'd imagined. Enjoyable.

[Ursa B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. A well written, interesting, daring, sometimes really shocking. As someone who used to visiting psychoanalyst for quite a long time I belive every single word he wrote.

[Leslie Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was moved to explain why Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson could release people practicing from the dubious duty that binds them for therein contained most psychoanalyst's historic blackout of much debate, but you're sure. All the names, but Masson's own, are fictive.

(1) As a candidate to enter the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis, Masson has to undergo what might be jinxed analysis for five years. One supervisor, Schiffer, accused him of plagiarism today. What happened is he says, “I wrote that paper. You’re stealing it from me” when Masson hadn’t written the paper to him, yet. He must’ve thought Masson coined the idea for the paper and that the idea about Masson’s wife Terri’s experience in the Warsaw Ghetto was a mere appropriation of his to crank away about her house there.

Schiffer attempts to take away Masson’s belief in Terri because he's beggarly. In such a paper Masson was planning to argue that early sexual assaults led to hysteria but with Freud’s abandonment of his own practical theory in tow. That’s not Schiffer, as Freud’s denial of molesting only undergirds psychoanalytic thought. p. 94. And they can't have it both ways because one does not cancel another patient's true to life candour.

About Schiffer's candour: He tells Masson that he's tempted by other women because his not Schiffer's wife is a dog. Telling Masson about his wife is out of bounds because Masson could argue about that. It's more analogous to a meet and greet to see who will pay for dinner. Why don't you? Not for a symbol or a code, which belongs to the past that of men who will always pay for an objectively pretty woman. Why don't you Masson? Because if you do, some won't flee. You see men like you do like the chase not so Schiffer, who is becoming blasé unlike you.

(2) When all of the supervisors are booked for the year, and Masson does not want to wait, he finds one in Ontario, four hours drive from Toronto. The analyst consents too but with the caveat that he would see Masson at 8 am. So, Masson gets up at 4 am and drives four hours in bleak, subzero temperatures only for Dr. Blaustein to appear nonplussed and half asleep. Moreover, he asks Masson if he would mind him waiting to start until he had breakfast. Who knew?

(3) What about Daniella? She is a pretty Eastern European graduate student, who didn’t know her father back there, and whose mother never talked to her about anything. Period. When Masson tells Dr. Blaustein about her, he replies that it seemed to him she had “good enough mothering” which hit hard.

Daniella says, “You probably think I am just a little kid. Well, I’m not. I’m a young woman, and I know I’m attractive. And you’re not my father. You are Dr. Masson. And you are within reach, sitting right behind me, just a little older than I am. And you have sexual organs. You are too close. You could never be my father, but you could be my lover.” p. 112

He asks Dr. Blaustein how to approach her point about him. He does understand when Dr. Blaustein says, “if you feel something in a session, stop and consider it as a possible symptom of the patient.” So conversely if he felt examined by her and thus angry in total at their session, he should realize that those feelings like anger are per her.

But her temper, a form of neuroticism, compounds Masson’s buggy but alert problems. She plies fantasy over meaning when it’s her treatment not his. I bet she thinks money is a title, and it’s not for her to be here for that. And it’s not just penis envy because she delays moaning about her own mother’s lack of one. That's why hers means foreign, bewitched, and rote catch me if you can ecology like stealing because it’s allowed for attractive women like her.

We should stop hearing from adherents of the good penis, the bad breast, the bad faeces, hostile projective, and the depressive position over depression by choice, the nostalgia of those inked up, unwashed and totemic believers, them loci's reality distortion field become edit you're in a coastal area, an agency to do with what you like but you do it before the law, and those simpering alone, being a goad, screwing your mind because you're a fine one to talk, and those socialist minted thought.

[Simon Broad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, and relatively easy-going, if you aready understand some of the basics of Freud and psychoanalysis. It's interesting just how much clout the subject had at the time, and I would be interested to know how and why this went on to change after the 70s/80s, the period this book is set in.

The author is pretty convincing when it comes to the corruption and cliquiness he was up against, it seems pretty overstated here. Every time he mentions giving a paper, he seems to have had the whole room against him, and you can't help thinking; if things were this bad, why did they keep inviting you back? Likewise the meteoric rise to a very privileged position within psychoanalysis seems pretty unlikely given the amount of enemies he was apparently making at every turn. A lot of detail has been sacrificed for a black and white reading of things, it seems.

Masson's unpopularity as presented in the book seems to essentially hinge on his disagreeing with Freud (or later Freud, anyway) on the 'seduction theory'. All I know about this is what I've learnt from this book, so I may have a muddled view of things, but for supposed scientists to actually believe that every single claim of child sexual abuse was imagined, even if Freud may have believed that himself, seems pretty incredible. Some, possibly, but all, without question? Again, maybe I've misunderstood, but I found this so bizarre I found it hard to take a lot of the book seriously. I could have done with more explanation on this subject, which I imagine Masson gives in other books - perhaps things would have made more sense had I read those first.

Still, a unique and interesting view on a fascinating subject.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

My major at seminary was in psychology, my intention being to become a depth psychologist with a private practice dealing primarily with value issues. I had read all of the works of C.G. Jung, most of Freud, much of Adler, the Existential and Phenomenological psychotherapists etc. The more I studied the field, the less confident I was about the career. Beyond what now passes for common sense, there were few compelling discoveries in depth psychology. Psychotherapeutic efficacy seemed increasingly to me to be dependent upon such practical matters as the character of the therapist, and the rapport between the analyst and the analysand. In other words, psychotherapy seemed to me to be simply the kind of constructive engagement one seeks in friendship. The idea of taking money for being friendly didn't feel right.

Masson had his own engagement and disenchantment with professional psychiatry as is reflected in his memoir, at once a biography and an attack on psychoanalysis.

[David Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

After psychiatric consultations for more than thirty years with an element of psychoanalysis / transference, I found this book enlightening. The fact is that the psychiatrist will be of the opinion that you are in the grip of a fantasy / delusion and that nothing extraordinary outside of the confines of their experience ever happens. While reading this book I tried to explain this to me psychiatrist who then asked me if I thought he might be deluded. In the light of diplomacy and fear of a spell in the local hospital, I said no, and that I thought he was a good psychiatrist. Less morale courage than Jeffrey Masson I guess.
A very good book.

[Danette · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had a tough time reading this through to the end. While Dr. Masson makes a few good points (and I stress the word few), this book felt like "get back" to all those who wouldn't accept him, and the writing was mediocre.

[amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

a juicy insight into the culture of toronto's analytic training institute. discussion about misunderstandings of freud's work was also interesting.

[lixy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating story, and he's a good writer, if also somewhat self-serving and narcissistic (like many of his books).