The Assault on Truth

by Jeffrey Masson

The bestseller that reopened one of psychology’s deepest wounds.

For generations, Sigmund Freud’s legacy has shaped how we understand memory, trauma, desire, and the human mind. But what if one of the founding stories of psychoanalysis left out the voices that mattered most?

In The Assault on Truth, New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson revisits Freud’s early work with patients who described childhood sexual abuse, and the moment Freud turned away from what they told him. Drawing on letters, case histories, medical records, and long-suppressed evidence, Masson asks why those accounts were recast as fantasy, and what that decision cost generations of survivors.

This is the bestselling, much-discussed book that challenged the psychoanalytic establishment and sparked a fierce public debate about trauma, memory, power, and whose truth gets believed. Urgent, provocative, and deeply researched, The Assault on Truth remains essential reading for anyone interested in Freud, psychology, and the lasting consequences of disbelief.

What happens when the people meant to listen decide not to believe?

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology

278 pages, Paperback

Published September 30, 2025

Reviews

[Abby Black]

Read this for a book club and expected it to be boring since psychology and Freud has never peaked my interest.

WOW. So much of western psychology today is built upon Freud’s work in the late 1890s and early 1900s. And we celebrate that WHILE COMPLETELY IGNORING the FACT that Freud’s rejection of the “seduction theory” involved covering up for parents who were sexually abusing CHILDREN (incest?!) and blaming it on the innocent children for lying. DESPITE the fact that Freud was present at autopsies for dead kids who were raped to death by family members. And despite the fact that some of these people who were working with Freud were sexually abusing their own kids!!! And when these kids bravely spoke up, rather than listening to the truth they claimed these kids were suffering from hysteria and needed treatment in mental facilities?!

Sick. Sick. Sick. Everywhere in society we are protecting pedofiles and it has to stop.

[Bonnie]

This should be required reading for high school students!

[Stephen De Los Rios]

This definitely was a more difficult read. A lot more of information around the “scientific” community in which this story evolved but nonetheless important to show why Freud was a fraudulent character. I actually don’t fully appreciate the importance of this book. I felt I was reading something important but knew hardly anything about the context. I read this fully trusting that this would be important in my next reads but I can only know how important moving forward. The conclusion I walked away with is something I think we all know already and that is, the therapeutic community is a bunch of nonsense meant to replace priests with therapists and I believe is a deistic attack on humans where as humans. The next several reads will confirm how deep this trail goes but for now, it was interesting and a bit difficult to follow.

[Felicia]

This isn’t just a book about Freud. It’s a book about what happens when uncomfortable truths get buried because they’re too costly to face.

Masson argues that Freud originally believed many psychological symptoms came from real childhood abuse and then retreated from that idea when it threatened the social order. In other words: lived suffering got reframed as fantasy. The system stayed comfortable. Victims didn’t.

That’s the part that stuck with me.

Whether or not every historical claim holds up, the moral question hits hard: Do we protect reputations and theories, or do we protect people?

From a faith lens, truth and human dignity go together. If someone says they were hurt, we don’t explain it away to keep things tidy. We tell the truth, even when it’s inconvenient.

The book is definitely opinionated and a bit prosecutorial, but it’s thought-provoking and gutsy. Not perfect scholarship, but an important challenge.

Worth reading if you care about trauma, psychology, and the courage to name what’s real.

[Rachel Bertrand]

Truly shows how professional pressure can shape an entire industry; Freud’s abandonment of the seduction theory was nothing more than caving to the pressure put on him by his colleagues. Rather than accept the truth being told to him by children or adults recounting what had happened to them as children, he chose to assert that all his patients were lying. In light of this, some of his theories make more sense; an outlandish claim needs to be supported by even more outlandish theories.

Should be required reading to illustrate how even the most “truth seeking” of industries can easily be corrupted by those who don’t want to see the light.

[Earl Pike]

Excellently researched and well presented while altogether utterly disturbing. The fact that Freud, who is so well celebrated in psychotherapy essentially built his theories to protect pedophiles is heinous.

This should be required reading for all psychology students. In fact, understanding the theories that shape modern approaches to understanding behavior and conscientiousness should be core education. This serves to ‘poke holes’ in the established practices of psychology and serves to illuminate the problem of pedophilia.

[Andrew]

Equal parts fascinating and alarming. Can be dense in places, but it is well worth the read. The ramifications of Freud's decision to move from his original belief in the reality of sexual abuse of children, to the theory the revelations in therapy were the fantasy of the victims, simply cannot be estimated.

[Allison Thomas]

I never bought the Oedipus Complex. It seems completely whackadoodle to me and don’t understand why people take it as the gospel. I was horrified to read how Freud covered up rape and incest for years. I am more convinced the average man on the street knows more than any said expert.

[Jennifer Mulhall]

This book evaluates Freud’s early ideas about how trauma took shape—and how his opinion later changed. The subject matter can be very heavy at times but the book is definitely a thought-provoking read especially for anyone who has a psychology background.

[Megan Meisberger]

A thoroughly researched look into Freud's early "seduction theory" (the theory that a lot of neuroses are caused by sexual abuse in childhood, especially daughters by their fathers), and the strange circumstances surrounding the retraction of this theory. A monumentally important book.

[Cory Wallace]

This book was revealing about what went on with children that was unjust. I hate to say this is still going on today.

[April]

Amazing and so sad and frickin' rage-inducing. Cowards, the lot of them