Talk:The Assault on Truth
 | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||
| ||||||||
- I respectfully disagree with PolisherofCobwebs that Wilhelm Fliess's alleged sexual abuse of his son is more appropriate to the Freud article, because its really a theory Masson came up with through synthesis, so its not a fact that could be included in the Freud article, but it is important to Masson's conclusion, that Freud's coverup of the seduction was influenced by Fliess because Fliess was a pedophile trying to cover up his crime. --RJR3333 (talk) 05:41, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- I agree that my contribution should be placed in a different part of the text but I still think its relevant. Also this article seems to be more about the reaction to the book than the content of the book.--RJR3333 (talk) 06:08, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- Although The Assault on Truth is a source that clearly needs to be used with some caution, since numerous other reliable sources disagree with Masson's conclusions and question his scholarship, it is perfectly appropriate to use it in Sigmund Freud. We wouldn't present Masson's conclusions as the "facts", but we can reasonably mention his point of view as one among others. Please don't keep readding that text to this article, at least not in the places where you've added it in the past. It's just confusing and makes a mess of the page. Maybe it could go somewhere, but that needs to be worked out carefully.
- If this page looks like it's more about the reaction to the book than the book itself, that's because I've been careful to source it primarily to secondary sources - not to a primary text like the book itself. It can be used as a source, but that should be done with caution. It's a much better idea to base the article on secondary sources than to place our personal interpretations of the book here, which is what basing it on primary source material would involve. Polisher of Cobwebs (talk) 06:13, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, this page looks like it's more about the reaction to the book than about the book itself. Secondary sources are nice, but if you wrote most of this section, then you only talked about the scholars who disagreed with Masson, not those who agreed. According to your interpretation, only the feminists thought that what Masson says was true. When Fliess's letters were finally published, against the Freudians' wish, the whole world found out that Masson was right. Unfortunately, the sources I have read are in french (_Saccages psychologiques_, by Maurice Hurni and Giovanna Stoll). In one chapter, they explain the case of Dora, published in french as _5 Psychanalyses_ (Five Psychoanalyses), five cases that Freud recounts himself (with the rat man, President Schreber et al). Freud says that Dora claimed she was abused by a friend of her father's. Freud remembers the pressures of Dora's father, who pushed Freud to doubt Dora's version of the story. Freud says that Dora is the best example of a case of resistance to treatment, because she refused to doubt her memories of being raped, while in Freud's opinion, as she was a young girl and her father's friend was mature and good-looking, she *must* have desired him, seduced him. Then repressed her memories of wanting this handsome mature man sexually. Maurice Hurni sees in this the best example of Freud's denial of sexual abuse, consistant with what Freud confessed to Fliess, as Masson tells it. In a letter to Fliess, Freud confesses that he realised there was no money in siding with the victims, who usually are poor, while the fathers and husbands who send their children or wives to therapy have the means to pay. Freud's wish was to become famous, the new Galileo, and rich. So he confessed to Fliess he would replace his bad business of the theory of seduction by an opposite, more profitable theory, the theory that people with neurosis build fantasies of abuse to feel better about being poor and failures (namely, the fantasy "A child is battered"). This article is a good example of the denial of the secondary sources who agree with Masson. The article doesn't fit the standards of Wikipedia, being only about negative secondary sources (and "feminists", who can't be neutral, of course...), and having a nearly empty section about the content of the book. I'm putting the fixing of this page in my to do list... Nobody cares about your personal problem with Masson, people want a page about the book, not a page about how, according to you, every serious person disagreed with Masson, except the feminists and the basic readers who made it a best-seller. You even claim that Masson himself, at least, did a good job questioning the idea that the seduction theory was built by Freud from what his patients told him about the abuse they went through. He actually was pushing girls with hysteria to look for lost memories of abuse. It may be true, but it's weird to make a whole article about the part in scholar books where the scholar expresses possible doubts about what he claims himself (usual scholarly precaution). The main section has to be built upon, and the empty section about positive secondary sources has to exist. --Montalte (talk) 03:04, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
- Montalte, you may wish to read WP:TLDR, an essay that nicely explains that posts or comments that are too long often do not get read because of their excessive length. Yes, there is an imbalance between the amount of space the article gives to discussing the book and the amount of space given to discussing the reaction to the book. However, all that this shows is that the article is still a work in progress; it does not mean that I think the article should look the way it currently does. I welcome any sensible suggestions for improving the article. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:15, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
- Yes, this page looks like it's more about the reaction to the book than about the book itself. Secondary sources are nice, but if you wrote most of this section, then you only talked about the scholars who disagreed with Masson, not those who agreed. According to your interpretation, only the feminists thought that what Masson says was true. When Fliess's letters were finally published, against the Freudians' wish, the whole world found out that Masson was right. Unfortunately, the sources I have read are in french (_Saccages psychologiques_, by Maurice Hurni and Giovanna Stoll). In one chapter, they explain the case of Dora, published in french as _5 Psychanalyses_ (Five Psychoanalyses), five cases that Freud recounts himself (with the rat man, President Schreber et al). Freud says that Dora claimed she was abused by a friend of her father's. Freud remembers the pressures of Dora's father, who pushed Freud to doubt Dora's version of the story. Freud says that Dora is the best example of a case of resistance to treatment, because she refused to doubt her memories of being raped, while in Freud's opinion, as she was a young girl and her father's friend was mature and good-looking, she *must* have desired him, seduced him. Then repressed her memories of wanting this handsome mature man sexually. Maurice Hurni sees in this the best example of Freud's denial of sexual abuse, consistant with what Freud confessed to Fliess, as Masson tells it. In a letter to Fliess, Freud confesses that he realised there was no money in siding with the victims, who usually are poor, while the fathers and husbands who send their children or wives to therapy have the means to pay. Freud's wish was to become famous, the new Galileo, and rich. So he confessed to Fliess he would replace his bad business of the theory of seduction by an opposite, more profitable theory, the theory that people with neurosis build fantasies of abuse to feel better about being poor and failures (namely, the fantasy "A child is battered"). This article is a good example of the denial of the secondary sources who agree with Masson. The article doesn't fit the standards of Wikipedia, being only about negative secondary sources (and "feminists", who can't be neutral, of course...), and having a nearly empty section about the content of the book. I'm putting the fixing of this page in my to do list... Nobody cares about your personal problem with Masson, people want a page about the book, not a page about how, according to you, every serious person disagreed with Masson, except the feminists and the basic readers who made it a best-seller. You even claim that Masson himself, at least, did a good job questioning the idea that the seduction theory was built by Freud from what his patients told him about the abuse they went through. He actually was pushing girls with hysteria to look for lost memories of abuse. It may be true, but it's weird to make a whole article about the part in scholar books where the scholar expresses possible doubts about what he claims himself (usual scholarly precaution). The main section has to be built upon, and the empty section about positive secondary sources has to exist. --Montalte (talk) 03:04, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
- If this page looks like it's more about the reaction to the book than the book itself, that's because I've been careful to source it primarily to secondary sources - not to a primary text like the book itself. It can be used as a source, but that should be done with caution. It's a much better idea to base the article on secondary sources than to place our personal interpretations of the book here, which is what basing it on primary source material would involve. Polisher of Cobwebs (talk) 06:13, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- Not if we only repeated what the author said, gave a summary, and did not pass judgement on it, there doesn't have to be an interpretation then, look at the article I wrote about Woodham-Smith's book, I personally didn't agree with her conclusions, but I didn't pass judgement on them. --RJR3333 (talk) 06:53, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- The bottom line is that I'm not convinced it would be helpful to add that material to this article. For now, the way to improve it should be to add material from secondary sources. Polisher of Cobwebs (talk) 07:26, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
- Are you saying that a book's wikipedia page shouldn't be about the content of the book? At least you were honest in stating your intentions.--Montalte (talk) 03:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
- There really isn't any point replying to a comment made in 2012. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:19, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
- Are you saying that a book's wikipedia page shouldn't be about the content of the book? At least you were honest in stating your intentions.--Montalte (talk) 03:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
Contradictory sentence[edit]
"He accused Masson of... largely ignoring the reasons Freud gave for abandoning the theory, and failing to show that Freud did not consider those reasons persuasive." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimstutt (talk • contribs) 10:32, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
"groundlessly blamed"[edit]
The sentence "Masson has been groundlessly blamed[who?] for encouraging the recovered memory movement by implying that a collective effort to retrieve painful memories of incest was required, although he has rejected the accusation as unfounded and malicious.[citation needed]" First of all, we need to know _who_ blames Masson, groundlessly or otherwise, for encouraging the recovered memory movement via a source citation. Then we need something to show us that the judgement 'groundlessly' is anything other than original research or the opinion of one editor. 71.139.124.132 (talk) 02:55, 13 February 2023 (UTC)