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In the Freud Archives
Includes an afterword by the author
In the Freud Archives tells the story of an unlikely encounter among three men: K. R. Eissler, the venerable doyen of psychoanalysis; Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a flamboyant, restless forty-two-year-old Sanskrit scholar turned psychoanalyst turned virulent anti-Freudian; and Peter Swales, a mischievous thirty-five-year-old former assistant to the Rolling Stones and self-taught Freud scholar. At the center of their Oedipal drama are the Sigmund Freud Archives--founded, headed, and jealously guarded by Eissler--whose sealed treasure gleams and beckons to the community of Freud scholarship as if it were the Rhine gold.
Janet Malcolm's fascinating book first appeared some twenty years ago, when it was immediately recognized as a rare and remarkable work of nonfiction. A story of infatuation and disappointment, betrayal and revenge, In the Freud Archives is essentially a comedy. But the powerful presence of Freud himself and the harsh bracing air of his ideas about unconscious life hover over the narrative and give it a tragic dimension.
In the Freud Archives tells the story of an unlikely encounter among three men: K. R. Eissler, the venerable doyen of psychoanalysis; Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a flamboyant, restless forty-two-year-old Sanskrit scholar turned psychoanalyst turned virulent anti-Freudian; and Peter Swales, a mischievous thirty-five-year-old former assistant to the Rolling Stones and self-taught Freud scholar. At the center of their Oedipal drama are the Sigmund Freud Archives--founded, headed, and jealously guarded by Eissler--whose sealed treasure gleams and beckons to the community of Freud scholarship as if it were the Rhine gold.
Janet Malcolm's fascinating book first appeared some twenty years ago, when it was immediately recognized as a rare and remarkable work of nonfiction. A story of infatuation and disappointment, betrayal and revenge, In the Freud Archives is essentially a comedy. But the powerful presence of Freud himself and the harsh bracing air of his ideas about unconscious life hover over the narrative and give it a tragic dimension.
162 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
38 people are currently reading
3654 people want to read
About the author
Janet Malcolm
26 books523 followersJanet Malcolm was a journalist, biographer, collagist, and staff writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of
In the Freud Archives
and
The Crime of Sheila McGough
, as well as biographies of Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, and Anton Chekhov.
The Modern Library chose her controversial book The Journalist and the Murderer — with its infamous first line — as one of the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th century.
Her most recent book is Forty-one False Starts .
The Modern Library chose her controversial book The Journalist and the Murderer — with its infamous first line — as one of the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th century.
Her most recent book is Forty-one False Starts .
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April 21, 2013
THE VERY BRAINY PIGLET
This book had as many twists and turns as a very brainy greased piglet and it's hard to write a review as we are talking about Lofty Matters here. But here goes. At the time Sigmund Freud was figuring out his vast theories he was one quack amongst many quacks. His theories were later accepted by many and his fellow quacks were consigned to the bin of history, so that makes him Not A Quack. This is a very important fact. The crux of the argument around which this book pivots so gracefully (speaking as a Freudian ignoramus, I have read maybe two introductions to Freud) is as follows.
THE SEDUCTION THEORY (NO PIGLETS INVOLVED)
In the beginning Freud treats women suffering from "hysteria". I think we would now call this neurosis. He hypnotises them. No, not with his personal charm, with actual hypnosis. They tell him (under hypnosis) stories of sexual abuse inflicted upon them by their male family members, usually the father. Freud is staggered and comes up with his Seduction Theory. The abuse suffered by these women has caused their hysteria. Sounds logical. But he uses the word seduction when we would use the word abuse or rape, and so right there we have a problem. Seduction? Did he mean any of the implications we now hear in this word? Don't know.
So then three years later he changed his mind. For various reasons* he abandoned the Seduction Theory and concluded that all this stuff he was hearing was fantasy, made up by the patient. ("the neurotic symptoms were not related directly to actual events but to wishful fantasies" - SF). So then he came upon his whole Oedipus complex theory &c, and thereby invented psychoanalysis.
ANOTHER VERY BRAINY PIGLET
Time passes as does Dr Freud, and his ten tons of manuscripts and letters are placed in an archive which becomes known as "the archive". It resides in the Freud Museum in London. In the 1970s along comes the antihero of this book, shagadelic Jeffrey Masson who by enormous zest and charm becomes adopted by the grizzled Dr Eissler as the next Keeper of the Freud Archive. All the older staid analysts in the Freud business are insanely affronted, like as if Mick Jagger just slept with their daughter and she bragged about it. (It's so easy to have fun with the Freudians). But sexy young Masson has his imp of the perverse working day and night for him and whilst on probation for this ultimate job does lectures and interviews and articles in which he denounces Freud - yes, according to Masson the sexual abuse spoken of by Freud's patients was real, not fantasy, and Freud rejected the Seduction Theory simply because it was fatal for psychoanalysis.
This accusation is stunning. I am not aware of any great denunciations of Freud by feminists but as soon as modern feminists themselves became aware of the prevalence of sexual abuse of children (suppressed by society for so many years) they should have been all over Freud like a nasty rash exposing him as one of the chief deniers of the unpleasant facts about the abuse of children. Maybe they were, I don't get out much.
Anyway, according to Masson, psychoanalysts proceed on the understanding that there is no essential difference between fantasy and reality, that it doesn't really matter if abuse has taken place or not, the point is to get the patient to a place where she is not being crippled by her perceived problem. Not sure if that's correct but there's a whole Recovered Memory/False Memory industry out there willing to argue the point in court. Man. this stuff is thorny! No - hard to keep hold of, like a piglet. No sense in changing metaphors now.
THE THIRD AND FINAL PIGLET
Unfortunately for me, this book is about the big rift between the various personalities here, Masson, Eissler and another weird character, the former Rolling Stones gofer turned punk historian (seriously) Peter J Swales. Therefore it is a meeting about a meeting, and once I got a third way through this I did not want to bother with these curous people anymore, I wanted to find out what has happened to the Seduction Theory in modern psychothinking.
So yes this book is a splendid piece of journalism but by reading it I found it wasn't the book I should have been reading. That's ironic, right?
* one reason that in a world of escalating antisemitism, and given that all his patients were Jewish, a theory which flatly stated that there was a lot of sexual abuse going on within families would be just more grist for the Nazi mill.
This book had as many twists and turns as a very brainy greased piglet and it's hard to write a review as we are talking about Lofty Matters here. But here goes. At the time Sigmund Freud was figuring out his vast theories he was one quack amongst many quacks. His theories were later accepted by many and his fellow quacks were consigned to the bin of history, so that makes him Not A Quack. This is a very important fact. The crux of the argument around which this book pivots so gracefully (speaking as a Freudian ignoramus, I have read maybe two introductions to Freud) is as follows.
THE SEDUCTION THEORY (NO PIGLETS INVOLVED)
In the beginning Freud treats women suffering from "hysteria". I think we would now call this neurosis. He hypnotises them. No, not with his personal charm, with actual hypnosis. They tell him (under hypnosis) stories of sexual abuse inflicted upon them by their male family members, usually the father. Freud is staggered and comes up with his Seduction Theory. The abuse suffered by these women has caused their hysteria. Sounds logical. But he uses the word seduction when we would use the word abuse or rape, and so right there we have a problem. Seduction? Did he mean any of the implications we now hear in this word? Don't know.
So then three years later he changed his mind. For various reasons* he abandoned the Seduction Theory and concluded that all this stuff he was hearing was fantasy, made up by the patient. ("the neurotic symptoms were not related directly to actual events but to wishful fantasies" - SF). So then he came upon his whole Oedipus complex theory &c, and thereby invented psychoanalysis.
ANOTHER VERY BRAINY PIGLET
Time passes as does Dr Freud, and his ten tons of manuscripts and letters are placed in an archive which becomes known as "the archive". It resides in the Freud Museum in London. In the 1970s along comes the antihero of this book, shagadelic Jeffrey Masson who by enormous zest and charm becomes adopted by the grizzled Dr Eissler as the next Keeper of the Freud Archive. All the older staid analysts in the Freud business are insanely affronted, like as if Mick Jagger just slept with their daughter and she bragged about it. (It's so easy to have fun with the Freudians). But sexy young Masson has his imp of the perverse working day and night for him and whilst on probation for this ultimate job does lectures and interviews and articles in which he denounces Freud - yes, according to Masson the sexual abuse spoken of by Freud's patients was real, not fantasy, and Freud rejected the Seduction Theory simply because it was fatal for psychoanalysis.
This accusation is stunning. I am not aware of any great denunciations of Freud by feminists but as soon as modern feminists themselves became aware of the prevalence of sexual abuse of children (suppressed by society for so many years) they should have been all over Freud like a nasty rash exposing him as one of the chief deniers of the unpleasant facts about the abuse of children. Maybe they were, I don't get out much.
Anyway, according to Masson, psychoanalysts proceed on the understanding that there is no essential difference between fantasy and reality, that it doesn't really matter if abuse has taken place or not, the point is to get the patient to a place where she is not being crippled by her perceived problem. Not sure if that's correct but there's a whole Recovered Memory/False Memory industry out there willing to argue the point in court. Man. this stuff is thorny! No - hard to keep hold of, like a piglet. No sense in changing metaphors now.
THE THIRD AND FINAL PIGLET
Unfortunately for me, this book is about the big rift between the various personalities here, Masson, Eissler and another weird character, the former Rolling Stones gofer turned punk historian (seriously) Peter J Swales. Therefore it is a meeting about a meeting, and once I got a third way through this I did not want to bother with these curous people anymore, I wanted to find out what has happened to the Seduction Theory in modern psychothinking.
So yes this book is a splendid piece of journalism but by reading it I found it wasn't the book I should have been reading. That's ironic, right?
* one reason that in a world of escalating antisemitism, and given that all his patients were Jewish, a theory which flatly stated that there was a lot of sexual abuse going on within families would be just more grist for the Nazi mill.
February 22, 2010
Fun. I mean, certainly not of interest to everyone, but if you've ever given half a shit about Freud (which you should) and if the idea of reading about a bunch of lunatic analysts and deranged academic infighting doesn't actively turn you off, I definitely recommend In the Freud Archives. Also, it might enhance enjoyment if you've got ties to Berkeley or Manhattan.... There is an Oscar-winning screenplay waiting to be plucked from these pages. Helen Mirren will get best supporting actress for her role as Anna Freud. I can't wait to see it, so hurry up and adapt! It won't break any box office records, but several notable critics might gush themselves to death.
Anyway: note that this book is incredibly short. I'd always pictured it being kind of long and footnotey, but it's basically a long New Yorker article, not a scholarly book. If I'd realized how short and readable this was, I might've read it a long time ago. It's really the most entertaining thing that I've read in awhile.
Anyway: note that this book is incredibly short. I'd always pictured it being kind of long and footnotey, but it's basically a long New Yorker article, not a scholarly book. If I'd realized how short and readable this was, I might've read it a long time ago. It's really the most entertaining thing that I've read in awhile.
February 17, 2008
One of my favorite books of all time. Janet Malcolm writes with a poison pen, but sees with extreme lucidity. She is a searchlight in a greenhouse, withering whatever catches her attention. Here, she turns her vision on a favorite subject: the world of psychoanalysis.
A controversy between a trio of psychoanalysts becomes an exploration of ambition, intellectual obsession, the practice of and institutions around psychoanalysis, the problems of history...
The subject of the conflict is the birth of psychoanalytic theory in Vienna. Three men become obsessed with its historical interpretation: heroic origin myth or secret scandal. The battleground is the Freud Archives, the collection of Freud's unpublished works, housed in his last home and carefully guarded by his daughter, Anna Freud. The three men go at each other like three knights each trying to climb braids hanging from a tower.
The keyphrase here is: "the truth is better than fiction, it is just harder to write well."
A controversy between a trio of psychoanalysts becomes an exploration of ambition, intellectual obsession, the practice of and institutions around psychoanalysis, the problems of history...
The subject of the conflict is the birth of psychoanalytic theory in Vienna. Three men become obsessed with its historical interpretation: heroic origin myth or secret scandal. The battleground is the Freud Archives, the collection of Freud's unpublished works, housed in his last home and carefully guarded by his daughter, Anna Freud. The three men go at each other like three knights each trying to climb braids hanging from a tower.
The keyphrase here is: "the truth is better than fiction, it is just harder to write well."
August 27, 2025
An obvious feat of reportage but also, more crucially, a wonderful Oedipal comedy. There is an underlying humour to all of this (underscored by Malcolm’s own ambivalence), that these revered analysts all act in such a way (if anyone should know better etc.) but that’s the rub. No one can withstand the implications of analysis for longer than an appointment, a session. Putting yourself on the couch indefinitely is basically a cessation of your own humanity, a concession to fantasy. These guys, however, may have needed to do that more often than they did
February 17, 2013
Surprisingly (given the rather strange and narrow topic), a fascinating book -- not just on Freud, but on academic narcissism and on the psychology of heresy...
March 10, 2025
In the Freud Archives is an exhilarating and heady character study. The narrative centers around the succession of the Directorship of the Sigmund Freud Archives in the 1970s and the three psychoanalysts involved: one a well-respected elder in the field, and two young "upstarts". What I hadn’t anticipated was how much more this book would offer for thrills and gasps... but it also prompted deep reflection on themes like ambition, legacy, family loyalty, and the complexities of intellectual history. This is one of those books that lingers long after you’ve finished it. Really impressed with Malcolm's style too.
Some passages to whet the appetite:
"They liked me well enough 'in my own room'. They loved to hear what creeps and dolts analysts are. I was like an intellectual gigolo - you get your pleasure from him, but you don't take him out in public."
"The worst thing that psychoanalysts have left the world: the notion that there is no reality, that there are only the individual experiences of it."
"My starting point is that all people are devious and sinister , that they're shits. For me, the world is full of shit, so I'm no disappointed."
"Human nature is such that when we are suddenly taken up by someone whom we consider superior and admirable, we accept his attentions calmly, whereas when we are dropped, we cannot rest until we feel we have got to the bottom of the person's profound irrationality."
Some passages to whet the appetite:
"They liked me well enough 'in my own room'. They loved to hear what creeps and dolts analysts are. I was like an intellectual gigolo - you get your pleasure from him, but you don't take him out in public."
"The worst thing that psychoanalysts have left the world: the notion that there is no reality, that there are only the individual experiences of it."
"My starting point is that all people are devious and sinister , that they're shits. For me, the world is full of shit, so I'm no disappointed."
"Human nature is such that when we are suddenly taken up by someone whom we consider superior and admirable, we accept his attentions calmly, whereas when we are dropped, we cannot rest until we feel we have got to the bottom of the person's profound irrationality."
February 28, 2025
Fascinating character study that made me remember why I love long form journalism. The afterward really ices the cake.
June 1, 2010
I would read anything by Janet Malcolm. There's no one who does what she does better. I will read everything by Janet Malcolm, but I want to pace myself rather than burning through all of it and then being despondent for the rest of my life.
July 5, 2023
very fun. janet malcolm knows how to tell a story. i’m less fascinated by masson than she was—he seems a straightforward if sincere hack, the kind who comes easily to shallow knowledge and mistakes that for genius—but the tale of who fell for him and why was very satisfyingly freudian.
June 30, 2020
"If you love Freud so much why don't you kill your father and marry him?"
April 27, 2024
The basic theme here, which is spelled out rather clearly, is idealization followed by disillusionment. This idea undergirds the historical context of the story being told. It happens among the actual players as the story is being told. And I think Malcolm is using the story itself to propel such a disillusionment onto the general public. In other words, look at these psychiatrists! You really hold these people in esteem?
This may be the most anti-heroic book I have ever read. Malcolm gives us backstage insights into the intrigues among intellectuals at the top of the field of psychology circa 1980, and shows them all behaving basically like jealous teenagers. The thoroughness of her reporting makes the story enthralling in a gossipy kind of way; but every single one of the players in this melodrama are belittled by their conduct in it. The book is at once amusing, distasteful and cringey. I learned in grad school that intellectuals are capable of these kinds of petulant food fights; that’s one of the reasons I chose the path of the dishwasher. The book makes me glad I’ve spent my life among immigrants in steamy kitchens.
But, yeah, watching them psychoanalyze each other maliciously was funny.
This may be the most anti-heroic book I have ever read. Malcolm gives us backstage insights into the intrigues among intellectuals at the top of the field of psychology circa 1980, and shows them all behaving basically like jealous teenagers. The thoroughness of her reporting makes the story enthralling in a gossipy kind of way; but every single one of the players in this melodrama are belittled by their conduct in it. The book is at once amusing, distasteful and cringey. I learned in grad school that intellectuals are capable of these kinds of petulant food fights; that’s one of the reasons I chose the path of the dishwasher. The book makes me glad I’ve spent my life among immigrants in steamy kitchens.
But, yeah, watching them psychoanalyze each other maliciously was funny.
Read
March 15, 2020I just want to remember how happy I felt reading this in Lyon surrounded by people and in proximity to fawn, flowers and spring in the air. A beautiful calmness.
February 27, 2025
Quite a book. Read about in the NYT and decided to read it.
Now my knowledge of psychology and analysis and psychoanalysis etc. is limited. Took a course in college many years ago and that was it, but I've since read into the subject (a little) and know some basics, which was enough to understand - and enjoy - the first half of this book. A young man, Jeffrey Masson, an expert in Sanskrit, is chosen to manage and control Freud's papers. This includes Freud's writings, thoughts, letters, and so on, which amount to thousands of pages. This all happens in the early 1970's - and exactly when I took that one psychology course! At any rate, Masson is kind of a wunderkind, accepted by the former director of Freud's work - and by Anna Freud herself! Based on his intelligence, charm, charisma and his work ethic - he learns German in about six months in order to fully read and understand Freud's work - he's got the dream job of many an archivist who specializes in psychoanalysis and so on...
I understood it, followed every word. Written cleanly, plainly and not 'dumbed down,' or anything similar. Masson wants the job, gets the job and yet within a year the wunderkind turns into the enemy, the imposter, the one-who-shall-not-be-named unless you're damning his name! What happens is he writes a few articles which (omg!) dare to criticize Freud, and re-examine some of Freud's more prominent theories. (Actually, he questions them.) I thought this was allowed in science, but then again, scientists and researchers in all fields can often be mighty thin-skinned. But the fact remains that Freud ALSO questioned some of his results, theories, methods and so on...
And what adds to the flavor is this: the man who recommends Masson for this particular job is KR Eissler, a well-known (famous!) psychoanalyst. The two - Masson and Eissler - battle it out and Masson gets the sack...
So first half of the book, for me, highly readable and fascinating. But when the author gets into some more heavy-duty information, and me lacking the background to understand or appreciate what's being written, I got lost. Several times. I forged on, finished, but all in all...
An interesting and fascinating chapter during a period where this was being battled out in the press, in person and in letters, talks and conferences, etc.
Four stars.
Now my knowledge of psychology and analysis and psychoanalysis etc. is limited. Took a course in college many years ago and that was it, but I've since read into the subject (a little) and know some basics, which was enough to understand - and enjoy - the first half of this book. A young man, Jeffrey Masson, an expert in Sanskrit, is chosen to manage and control Freud's papers. This includes Freud's writings, thoughts, letters, and so on, which amount to thousands of pages. This all happens in the early 1970's - and exactly when I took that one psychology course! At any rate, Masson is kind of a wunderkind, accepted by the former director of Freud's work - and by Anna Freud herself! Based on his intelligence, charm, charisma and his work ethic - he learns German in about six months in order to fully read and understand Freud's work - he's got the dream job of many an archivist who specializes in psychoanalysis and so on...
I understood it, followed every word. Written cleanly, plainly and not 'dumbed down,' or anything similar. Masson wants the job, gets the job and yet within a year the wunderkind turns into the enemy, the imposter, the one-who-shall-not-be-named unless you're damning his name! What happens is he writes a few articles which (omg!) dare to criticize Freud, and re-examine some of Freud's more prominent theories. (Actually, he questions them.) I thought this was allowed in science, but then again, scientists and researchers in all fields can often be mighty thin-skinned. But the fact remains that Freud ALSO questioned some of his results, theories, methods and so on...
And what adds to the flavor is this: the man who recommends Masson for this particular job is KR Eissler, a well-known (famous!) psychoanalyst. The two - Masson and Eissler - battle it out and Masson gets the sack...
So first half of the book, for me, highly readable and fascinating. But when the author gets into some more heavy-duty information, and me lacking the background to understand or appreciate what's being written, I got lost. Several times. I forged on, finished, but all in all...
An interesting and fascinating chapter during a period where this was being battled out in the press, in person and in letters, talks and conferences, etc.
Four stars.
January 22, 2024
Janet Malcolm's book In the Freud Archives is a captivating story of quarreling scholars and maniacal dilettantes: Eissler is head of the Freud archives, a stern Austrian psychoanalyst who uncritically valorizes Freud as a near-perfect man; Jeff Maisson is an impulsive, charismatic Indologist who abandons his professorship in Sanskrit Studies to become a therapist and work in the Freud archives; Peter Swales is a grammar-school drop-out who, flipping from one career to the next, leaves his job with the Rolling Stones to track down the anonymous patients of Freud's case studies. In their own quixotic investigations, Maisson and Swales come to doubt and discredit the luminous status of Freud—Maisson believes that Freud duplicitously abandoned his earlier "seduction theory" in favor of the Oedipal Complex out of cocaine-addled loyalty of his colleague, Wilhelm Fliess (who attributed many neuroses to nasal disorders). Swales, however, finds evidence that Freud invented a number of his patients and was having an affair with his sister-in-law. Both Swales and Maisson become envious competitors of one another and enemies to Eissler.
The story is fascinating just as a character study of the bizarre eccentrics who had an outsized impact on the institution of psychoanalysis and the study of Freud, avid biographers hunting down letters to tease out the genealogy of Freud's lackadaisical thinking. But they themselves seem to be neurotic misfits. Maisson's colleagues variously describe him as a narcissist; an Oedipal character trying to destroy the father of psychiatry; an autodidact whose obsession with, and abandonment of, Freudianism can simply be dismissed in terms of cathexis and decathexis, hopping impetuously from one curiosity to the next; and a paranoiac who believes that the whole psychiatric world is against him. Even Maisson's undiplomatic tirades against Freudianism, railing against the practice of psychoanalysis, could be interpreted as an expression of the Freudian death drive, willfully seeking out the demise of his career as a manic form of ego-defense. But not just Maisson—all the analysts seem deranged. They rarely engage with each other's ideas but rather refute each other by psycho-analyzing. They are all quacks for whom Freudianism has replaced reason.
However self-serving and manipulative Maisson really was in real life, his critique does seem right. For Maisson, the issue is not just whether Freud rejected the seduction theory and adopted the Oedipal theory on unscientific grounds; the issue is a more fundamental one about the conflict between reality and fantasy. In the seduction theory, neuroses are a result of some real original trauma, sexual abuse enacted by a parent on a child, resulting in a maladaptive personality; in the Oedipal theory, the trauma is not real but rather a fantasy of the child, stuck in a regressive phase of development, loving the mother, wanting to kill the father, and unable to grow from these sexual hangups. The analysts put more emphasis on the mental rendering of reality than on reality itself. What disturbs Maisson most is a psychoanalytic conference in which an analyst reports a story about an Auschwitz survivor who said that the concentration camp "turned him into a man". In the analysts' view, the actual moral evil of the Holocaust is irrelevant; what matters is the victim's experience of it and it is possible in their view, in a twisted way, for the violence of the death camps to be a form of therapy to some. Maisson is horrified at the psychoanalysts who are too willing to center the deluded patient's experience over the actual reality. He is appalled when he looks into the case of Daniel Schreber, a man who was tortured by his obsessive father and threatened with castration by his doctors, but whom Freud simply interpreted as suffering from the Oedipal Complex and struggling to acquiesce to authority figures. It is a bunk hypothesis that ignores his real traumas.
It's a gripping story of academic jealousy and archive adventures.
The story is fascinating just as a character study of the bizarre eccentrics who had an outsized impact on the institution of psychoanalysis and the study of Freud, avid biographers hunting down letters to tease out the genealogy of Freud's lackadaisical thinking. But they themselves seem to be neurotic misfits. Maisson's colleagues variously describe him as a narcissist; an Oedipal character trying to destroy the father of psychiatry; an autodidact whose obsession with, and abandonment of, Freudianism can simply be dismissed in terms of cathexis and decathexis, hopping impetuously from one curiosity to the next; and a paranoiac who believes that the whole psychiatric world is against him. Even Maisson's undiplomatic tirades against Freudianism, railing against the practice of psychoanalysis, could be interpreted as an expression of the Freudian death drive, willfully seeking out the demise of his career as a manic form of ego-defense. But not just Maisson—all the analysts seem deranged. They rarely engage with each other's ideas but rather refute each other by psycho-analyzing. They are all quacks for whom Freudianism has replaced reason.
However self-serving and manipulative Maisson really was in real life, his critique does seem right. For Maisson, the issue is not just whether Freud rejected the seduction theory and adopted the Oedipal theory on unscientific grounds; the issue is a more fundamental one about the conflict between reality and fantasy. In the seduction theory, neuroses are a result of some real original trauma, sexual abuse enacted by a parent on a child, resulting in a maladaptive personality; in the Oedipal theory, the trauma is not real but rather a fantasy of the child, stuck in a regressive phase of development, loving the mother, wanting to kill the father, and unable to grow from these sexual hangups. The analysts put more emphasis on the mental rendering of reality than on reality itself. What disturbs Maisson most is a psychoanalytic conference in which an analyst reports a story about an Auschwitz survivor who said that the concentration camp "turned him into a man". In the analysts' view, the actual moral evil of the Holocaust is irrelevant; what matters is the victim's experience of it and it is possible in their view, in a twisted way, for the violence of the death camps to be a form of therapy to some. Maisson is horrified at the psychoanalysts who are too willing to center the deluded patient's experience over the actual reality. He is appalled when he looks into the case of Daniel Schreber, a man who was tortured by his obsessive father and threatened with castration by his doctors, but whom Freud simply interpreted as suffering from the Oedipal Complex and struggling to acquiesce to authority figures. It is a bunk hypothesis that ignores his real traumas.
It's a gripping story of academic jealousy and archive adventures.
August 31, 2024
This read like a mixture between an oral history of the fight over Freud's legacy, and a fantastic thriller. I was surprised by the structure of it: Janet Malcolm rarely interferes in the story, letting her subjects speak for themselves. But her artistry is everywhere in the book: in the way she frames their interactions, in the organization of the interviews, in the prodding questions that sometimes are nothing but a sentence. She lets all three men at the center of the story hoist themselves by their own petard as the saying goes. Engrossing and I was going to say illuminating, but it left me doubting what was true and what was interpretation. And isn't that the core of psychoanalysis after all?
March 24, 2025
I don’t think this was bad - but reviews are subjective and subjectively this pissed me OFF
the self importance, audacity and ego of these men did not cease to jar me for 160 pages
Kind of appreciated the drama / rollercoaster of it all but the primary takeaway is that we need a solid century of intellectual reparations where the ‘big ideas’ of white men are simply silenced
Also side note but pressing question - why do ANY of us care about what freud said??! Will say i am intrigued and would really like to know more about how/why/who took up his ideas and how their cultural influence came to be established because truly what the fuck… people really just can say anything
the self importance, audacity and ego of these men did not cease to jar me for 160 pages
Kind of appreciated the drama / rollercoaster of it all but the primary takeaway is that we need a solid century of intellectual reparations where the ‘big ideas’ of white men are simply silenced
Also side note but pressing question - why do ANY of us care about what freud said??! Will say i am intrigued and would really like to know more about how/why/who took up his ideas and how their cultural influence came to be established because truly what the fuck… people really just can say anything
March 17, 2019
At root, the three insufferable, pedantic Freud scholars at the heart of Janet Malcolm's slim but riveting account engage in a highbrow hissy-fit that differs from a modern-day Twitter feud only a little bit. Rather than snarky 140-character subtweeting, the principals write novella-length letters at each other whose basic message boils down to "You hurt my feelings." This book is less than 160 pages but felt twice as long, so exhausted was I at these insecure windbags.
And yet, Malcolm's cool, brutally observant prose makes this otherwise cloistered debate about the true motives of Sigmund Freud's abandonment of his infamous seduction theory -- and who would gain the access to tell that story -- seem like the most consequential thing in the world.
This book is also worth reading because it forms a delicious (daresay Freudian?) subtext to readers of her industry classic The Journalist and the Murderer: At the same time Malcolm was documenting the libel trial between convicted triple murderer Jeffrey MacDonald and author Joe McGinniss, Malcolm was being sued by the subject of In the Freud Archives, self-proclaimed "intellectual gigolo" Jeffrey Masson. Like MacDonald with McGinniss, Masson thought Malcolm was "on his side" and would paint a largely sympathetic portrait of him rather than the kind of surgical vivisection she owns a virtual patent on. Keep that in mind next time you take out your dog-eared copy of TJATM.
And yet, Malcolm's cool, brutally observant prose makes this otherwise cloistered debate about the true motives of Sigmund Freud's abandonment of his infamous seduction theory -- and who would gain the access to tell that story -- seem like the most consequential thing in the world.
This book is also worth reading because it forms a delicious (daresay Freudian?) subtext to readers of her industry classic The Journalist and the Murderer: At the same time Malcolm was documenting the libel trial between convicted triple murderer Jeffrey MacDonald and author Joe McGinniss, Malcolm was being sued by the subject of In the Freud Archives, self-proclaimed "intellectual gigolo" Jeffrey Masson. Like MacDonald with McGinniss, Masson thought Malcolm was "on his side" and would paint a largely sympathetic portrait of him rather than the kind of surgical vivisection she owns a virtual patent on. Keep that in mind next time you take out your dog-eared copy of TJATM.
October 7, 2020
A short, clever, and ironic little journalistic book that reads like a long-form New Yorker article (which is exactly where it originally appeared). It was interesting to read more about the intellectual snobbery, pretentiousness, and narcissisms of the psychoanalytic world of the 1980s, and I did enjoy learning more about the interpretations of Freud's work and his life. But, like many books about SERIOUS PEOPLE, men especially, it rung a bit hollow. These people are petty and, in the end, quite sad. Why should I care? But alas, I did pick up the book. And I did read it. And I did, for all my lack of empathy, sort of enjoy it.
March 17, 2025
A fiction-style non-fiction book, about the battle within psychoanalysis between the primacy of facts versus that of fantasies, centering on a figure intent on discovering truth who may be in reality be indulging in conspiracy - that's some clever shit. Had me gripped like a thriller.
January 29, 2022
Well-written and the author certainly did a lot of research and interviews, but I'm pretty sure I still don't care about any Freud controversy.
August 5, 2025
Cutting, juicy portrayal of a drama between three key players in the psychoanalysis world.
December 27, 2025
Gripping read. Love how Malcolm navigates first person interviews, correspondences between her subjects and more general research. I could barely believe the letters these people sent each other.
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April 12, 2024meh
December 23, 2013
Were I to rate a book solely in terms of readability and interest, this one would get a five. The topic, J.M. Masson's dispute with the Freud Archives, however, is of less than world-historical importance. Having had some exposure to the psychoanalytic community while studying depth psychology in NYC and having read Masson's book on the affair, Assault on the Truth, I found it fascinating, reading it cover to cover in a single sitting. Now I want to go ahead and read more of Masson and Swales on psychoanalysis.
The dispute around which this book centers was primarily caused by Archive Director Masson's claim--to the NY Times!--that Freud had suppressed evidence about the etiological importance of childhood sexual experiences ('abuse') with older relatives, substituting for it his theories of infantile sexuality and Oedipal conflict--in other word, those theories which are arguably central to psychoanalysis.
In fact, Freud did move from a more to a less accepting attitude towards analysand's stories of childhood sex abuse at around the end of the nineteenth century. Masson's claim of suppression is exaggerated if taken to mean that Freud consciously distorted evidence--though it may be the case that his growing reluctance to take such memories at face value was overdetermined by personal psychological factors such as his own illicit sexual experiences, the fact that the supposed sexual preditors were often the same men who were paying their daughter's bills and a general social antipathy towards anyone repeating (and believing)_such claims. This notwithstanding, Freud never denied that there were indubitable cases of childhood sex abuse. He just came to believe that they were rare, much rarer than neurotic adults having false memories of such.
Masson was right, however, in saying that one's attitude towards infantile sexuality is a lynchpin of psychoanalysis and Malcolm's description of his claims and the psychanalytic community's responses to them is evidence of that.
The dispute around which this book centers was primarily caused by Archive Director Masson's claim--to the NY Times!--that Freud had suppressed evidence about the etiological importance of childhood sexual experiences ('abuse') with older relatives, substituting for it his theories of infantile sexuality and Oedipal conflict--in other word, those theories which are arguably central to psychoanalysis.
In fact, Freud did move from a more to a less accepting attitude towards analysand's stories of childhood sex abuse at around the end of the nineteenth century. Masson's claim of suppression is exaggerated if taken to mean that Freud consciously distorted evidence--though it may be the case that his growing reluctance to take such memories at face value was overdetermined by personal psychological factors such as his own illicit sexual experiences, the fact that the supposed sexual preditors were often the same men who were paying their daughter's bills and a general social antipathy towards anyone repeating (and believing)_such claims. This notwithstanding, Freud never denied that there were indubitable cases of childhood sex abuse. He just came to believe that they were rare, much rarer than neurotic adults having false memories of such.
Masson was right, however, in saying that one's attitude towards infantile sexuality is a lynchpin of psychoanalysis and Malcolm's description of his claims and the psychanalytic community's responses to them is evidence of that.
September 3, 2010
A book that surprised me--- and my first introduction to Janet Malcolm, who became one of my favourite writers. "In the Freud Archives" is a kind of family romance: an account of hopes, histories, filial affections given and betrayed, legacies despoiled, and savagely incestuous in-fighting amongst the intellectual heirs of Freud.
Malcolm grew up in the world of 1950s and early '60s psychoanalysis, a world where (remember Woody Allen's early routines?) Freudian theory was taken as a given and educated upper-middle-class New Yorkers took their analysts to be family oracles. Her account of the internecine battles over Freud's legacy is about not just Masson's insistence that Freud deliberately downplayed evidence of actual child abuse because he feared for the social acceptance of his theories, but about class and style and generations as well, about the end of an era where Freud's legacy was administered by Central European disciples of Freud as a kind of remnant of a lost culture and time.
"In the Freud Archives" is hilarious, sad, dryly witty, and wonderfully presented. Very much worth reading.
Malcolm grew up in the world of 1950s and early '60s psychoanalysis, a world where (remember Woody Allen's early routines?) Freudian theory was taken as a given and educated upper-middle-class New Yorkers took their analysts to be family oracles. Her account of the internecine battles over Freud's legacy is about not just Masson's insistence that Freud deliberately downplayed evidence of actual child abuse because he feared for the social acceptance of his theories, but about class and style and generations as well, about the end of an era where Freud's legacy was administered by Central European disciples of Freud as a kind of remnant of a lost culture and time.
"In the Freud Archives" is hilarious, sad, dryly witty, and wonderfully presented. Very much worth reading.
August 1, 2009
"You have allowed me, in a show of great confidence, to go through your cupboard."
A very interesting book, full of twists and turns and drama-queens masquerading as Freud scholars. Also, it was quite funny in parts. Ultimately I felt like it was maybe too harsh on Masson and not critical enough of Eissler. I found Eissler's nature to protect Freud's legacy very suspect. And I was never convinced that Masson's theories were wrong (at least we can safely say his main point is blatantly correct, now that we have the benefit of time on our side: that Freud's idea that people's psychological illnesses happened only in their heads and are not related in any way to reality is wrong). So what I'm saying is that Masson made some good (and correct!) points, and those points should be evaluated independently of how he treated/manipulated his fellow man. Swales was also an interesting character, uniquely flawed and brilliant. It seems like all involved were cast in a negative light, though Masson gets the brunt of it.
"His narcissism was wounded when you withdrew your approval" / "Well, my narcissism was wounded when I was proved to be a fool!"
A very interesting book, full of twists and turns and drama-queens masquerading as Freud scholars. Also, it was quite funny in parts. Ultimately I felt like it was maybe too harsh on Masson and not critical enough of Eissler. I found Eissler's nature to protect Freud's legacy very suspect. And I was never convinced that Masson's theories were wrong (at least we can safely say his main point is blatantly correct, now that we have the benefit of time on our side: that Freud's idea that people's psychological illnesses happened only in their heads and are not related in any way to reality is wrong). So what I'm saying is that Masson made some good (and correct!) points, and those points should be evaluated independently of how he treated/manipulated his fellow man. Swales was also an interesting character, uniquely flawed and brilliant. It seems like all involved were cast in a negative light, though Masson gets the brunt of it.
"His narcissism was wounded when you withdrew your approval" / "Well, my narcissism was wounded when I was proved to be a fool!"
April 12, 2012
Janet Malcolm says precisely what needs to be said in a voice that is elegant and deadly. The Journalist and the Murderer is, yes, brilliant, even required reading, though there's a perverse corner to my mind that enjoyed this book more. Perhaps it's glimpsing into the obsessive and strange, increasingly irrelevant world of psychoanalysis that appeals to me, or the way Malcolm dismantles Freudian psychology while framing her characters in a lurid Oedipal struggle. Then again, I suppose with anything Malcolm writes, it's about watching the way she connects the dots.
October 19, 2025
Beautiful way of examining the psyches of psychoanalysts — so much “showing rather than telling” of these analysts’ own blind spots through their own words. I always thought journalism and psychiatry/analysis went hand in hand and this book is a stunning demonstration.
September 3, 2025
For a reader with established interest in Freud & psychoanalysis, the quarrels and intrigues of this book are unsurprising pleasures.
For the rest of us, there is Janet Malcolm, who I believe could write page-turning prose about gravel, if requested.
Her journalism provides such a perfect balance of interview, quotation from letters & publications, and commentary.
Malcolm’s own voice, spare and direct, jumps off the page at well-timed moments. A brief exchange in her last meeting with Masson stands out:
“Nothing is interesting. We invest certain things with interest”
“No. Certain things are objectively interesting , and certain things are not. I’m always interested when people come up with something I didnt know.”
For the rest of us, there is Janet Malcolm, who I believe could write page-turning prose about gravel, if requested.
Her journalism provides such a perfect balance of interview, quotation from letters & publications, and commentary.
Malcolm’s own voice, spare and direct, jumps off the page at well-timed moments. A brief exchange in her last meeting with Masson stands out:
“Nothing is interesting. We invest certain things with interest”
“No. Certain things are objectively interesting , and certain things are not. I’m always interested when people come up with something I didnt know.”
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March 25, 2025i feel its a bit difficult to form an opinion on this as a book as it was primarily a transcript of different interviews that the writer had with pompous misogynistic white men with huge egos. my opinion on all that is formed tho - theyre all massive aresholes!
im not sure what i wanted but it was probably more of her narration - when i got past her academic writing style i thought she was pretty jokes and i respect her general disdain for all these wanky men that seeped through in the way she challenged them on occasion and was alive and well in the afterword !
im not sure what i wanted but it was probably more of her narration - when i got past her academic writing style i thought she was pretty jokes and i respect her general disdain for all these wanky men that seeped through in the way she challenged them on occasion and was alive and well in the afterword !
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