Quotes by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

“Eissler's rage knew no bounds. He did not like being harrassed by other analysts. Just today Masud Khan called me from London and asked me to dismiss you from the Archives. The board members, all o...”

“But Eissler also knew how the very people making the complaints and demanding my dismissal for what was, after all, a disagreement about the history of psychoanalysis, were guilty of extraordinary ...”

“Khan told me: Nobody wants to say anything publicly because I know too much about all of them. If we were all to be honest with each other, that would be the end of British psychoanalysis.”

“In my experience, psychoanalysis demanded loyalty that could not be questioned, the blind acceptance of unexamined wisdom. It is characteristic of religious orders to seek obedience without sceptic...”

“Terri is Jewish, she survived the Warsaw Ghetto, and I am also Jewish, and both of us have been immersed in holocaust literature. We are puzzled why so little has been written about the holocaust i...”

“While working at Anna Freud's house, I found an unpublished letter in which he [Freud] told Fliess, less than two weeks after he gave the paper [The Aetiology of Hysteria], I am as isolated as you ...”

“Do you believe, I said, that this could have had anything to do with his later abandonment of the theory? No. She was adamant. But tell me, Miss Freud, why did you omit this passage from your publi...”

“I called Anna Freud in London to tell her what was about to happen. It was a strange, honest conversation.”

“Miss Freud, I am sure you have heard that Dr. Eissler is going to fire me from the Archives. Yes. And I disagree with him. I did not like that second article in the New York Times. And I think you ...”

“By the way, your wife's intelligence is not natural. In fact, I find it disgusting. Because I know what it is really all about. And so does every other normal woman. Normal women don't want to be w...”

“I liked the idea of representing nobody but myself. No affiliation, no ties, no loyalties.”

“I still yearned then, and probably even more so earlier, for a strong, masculine person on whom I could pattern myself. Somebody I could admire, and imitate, and become close to and learn from. I h...”

“Animals cry. At least, they vocalise pain or distress, and perhaps call for help. Most people believe, therefore, that animals can be unhappy and also that they have such feelings as happiness, ang...”

“The professional and financial interest in continuing animal experimentation helps to explain at least some resistance to the notion that animals have a complex emotional life and are capable of ex...”

“It is often said that if slaughterhouses were made of glass, most people would be vegetarians. If the general public knew what went on inside animal experimentation laboratories, they would be abol...”

“Rats and mice are not generally regarded as pets, but as pests; they have few defenders. Yet the pain a rat or a mouse feels is every bit as real as that of any pet. In laboratories, they suffer, a...”

“Cats are contented with their lot, with or without our approval. They have less need of us than we would like. It would flatter us to think that cats cannot survive without us, that they need us em...”

“Cats do not give us too many chances. Abuse a cat's trust twice and you could be history, for cats are much less forgiving than dogs and will often lose their trust in you should you behave badly. ...”

“Humans are great lovers of consistency, and it annoys us that cats have different rules. Even if a cat is willing to give up her life for you, that does not mean that she is willing to change her m...”

“There is rarely an exception: once a cat makes up her mind to do something, your pleadings matter not at all. A dog, in the same circumstances, no matter how urgently he needs to do something, will...”