The Assault on Truth

A fearless investigation into Freud’s greatest reversal—and the century of silence that followed—The Assault on Truth exposes how the father of psychoanalysis buried his own discovery about childhood trauma, reshaping the course of psychology forever.

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?