Jeffrey Masson Quotes

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 breaches of ethical conduct.

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 mind at your request.

Almost all analysts in America are physicians and psychiatrists, and the medical profession is layered into a strict hierarchy. Every psychiatrist in a hospital is chief of some service, or head of some department.

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 of them, or at least most of them, are asking for the same."

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 with your wife. They can't stand her. And you know why? Because they can tell you that she is using her brain like a penis. Her mind is so developed because she is so filled with penis envy. She is so desperate for a penis that she has created one in her head. Her brain. Her huge brain is nothing but a substitute for her desire for a huge penis. Your wife has a cock for a brain, Masson, and you're getting fucked." He chortled in delight. I suspected from the way he said this that he believed it. It was a combination of the worst of analytic theory (penis envy) and the worst of his own personal prejudices against women. He said it with such passionate self-righteousness, that I knew I was helpless against him. It could never become the subject of a rational discussion.

[From a discussion with Sigmund Freud’s daughter]

The idea, to a cat, that somebody else owns him is ludicrous.

To me, looking at other people in terms of what is wrong with them —these gradations of disturbance— was and is distasteful. Always implicit in the doctor's view is, of course, how much more "healthy" you are than they. And this is almost never the case.

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 change his mind if you insist. He is made for compromise, for self-sacrifice, for thinking about how you feel. Not cats.

When the underlying reality is particularly unpleasant, we minimize—numbing ourselves to the actual extent of the real story. We say, “Things can't possibly be as bad as people tell us,” because we don't want them to be that bad. This is a form of magical thinking, a way of shutting our eyes. Surely if things were that bad, somebody would do something about it. Withdrawal can take the form of removing our interest (another horror story about furry pets, yawn, yawn); or our wandering attention (understandably, since we are besieged by other equally pressing images of horror). Of course this reaction can be genuine: not everyone need become an activist in the cause to end animal suffering. And becoming a vegetarian may seem like going too far. In fact, it is not such a difficult step and could be legitimately seen as the very best form of activism.

The cat does not merely experience contentment, he exudes it. You cannot be in the presence of a contented cat and not have some of that contentment rub off on you. Which surely is a good part of the reason we love cats so.

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 had sought this, always, in my teachers, and my search had always ended in disappointment. I was attracted emotionally to a position that I could only despise intellectually.

Perhaps if we had realized they are birds, with all the wonderful characteristics of birds, we would have paid closer attention to the ways in which chickens can enchant us. Take dust-bathing, for example. We call it a bath because the chicken finds a small indentation of dry earth and then proceeds to immerse herself in it as into a warm bath. The earth cleans her feathers. The first time I saw a chicken taking a dust bath, stretching out one iridescent wing and holding it up to the sunshine, then settling into the warmth of the afternoon only to fly effortlessly to a tree to roost in the evening, I was astonished.

I do not find it surprising that the Jains, the Buddhists, and the Hindus have all taken seriously the lives of others. The ability to imagine ourselves into the minds and bodies of “others”—whether humans we term different from us (Down syndrome children; Alzheimer sufferers; the so-called mentally ill) or the animals we use for our food—is of central importance because the failure to do so is precisely what led to the horrors of Auschwitz. So, when people ask, Have you nothing more important to think about? the answer is: There is nothing more important to think about than the heart of empathy, which in the final analysis is nothing other than the ability to love. Becoming a vegan is simply one manifestation of that love.

Because I was so eager to believe I was being helped by a talented, ethical, benevolent, and intelligent man, I sought evidence for this wherever I could. Anything less than this was too dreadful to contemplate.