To the editors.
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As a former psychiatric nurse whose experience was still in an era (’66-’68) of hushed-voice awe of Freud, and as one who experienced much of Masson’s isolation when I voiced frequent reservations about the therapy experience as I observed it, I found much to agree with in the article. My own objections at that time took a slightly different course–it seemed that one pathology was being replaced with another (the frequent “out-of-it” syndrome on admission being replaced with fulminating hatred of whomever was seen as responsible for their illness as the initial symptoms were allayed with pharmaceutical therapies); the ignoring of much research even then available that seemed to point to genetic or biological precipitants; and the disgusting attempts on the part of staff and therapists to fit retroactively one’s case history to the diagnosis on the patient history, among other things. But that is peripheral.
But this much is obvious–Hitler in 1938 had less of a track record than the Communists have today, yet both the Reader, in articles too numerous to detail, and Masson, obviously are, in either moral blindness or moral cowardice, sympathetic to an ideological system that has been the primary cause of death in the 20th Century.
Happy New Year!
