Significant Moments: That's What She Said!

Albert Rothenberg, M.D. first described or discovered a process he termed "homospatial thinking," which consists of actively conceiving two or more discrete entities occupying the same space, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities. Homospatial thinking has a salient role in the creative process in the following wide variety of fields: literature, the visual arts, music, science, and mathematics. This cognitive factor, along with "Janusian thinking," clarifies the nature of creative thinking as a highly adaptive and primarily nonregressive form of functioning.

My book Significant Moments includes a section in which the psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche serve as metaphors for each other.  Masson claimed that he had been defamed by a magazine writer.  Nietzsche claimed that book reviewers distorted his writings.  I have claimed that the George Washington University's psychiatric assessment of me from 1992 presents a distorted impression of my personality problems.

That I feel no curiosity at all about reviews of my books, especially in newspapers, should be forgiven me. My friends and my publishers know this and do not speak to me about such things. In one particular case I once did get to see all the sins that had been committed against one of my books—it was . . .

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
. . . The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory . . .

Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . published in 1984—a truly Orwellian irony.

Giles Hugo, Can You Grok Cyberia?
The Assault was . . .

J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . a book whose principal aim was to revive Freud's seduction theory, . . .

John Forrester, Dispatches from The Freud Wars: Psychoanalysis and Its Passions.
. . . which ascribed . . .

Herman Melville, Typee: A Romance.
. . . neurosis in . . .

J. Moussaieff Masson, ‘Assault on Truth’ — Letter to the Editor, N.Y. Review of Books (August 16, 1984).
. . . adults to . . .

Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess to Mars.
. . . seductions in childhood . . .

J. Moussaieff Masson, ‘Assault on Truth’ — Letter to the Editor, N.Y. Review of Books (August 16, 1984).
. . . by reasserting the truth—that is, the absolute trustworthiness—of Freud's early patients. Masson accused Freud of scientific cowardice, in that he claimed Freud rejected his own evidence that his patients had been abused in childhood . . .

John Forrester, Dispatches from The Freud Wars: Psychoanalysis and Its Passions.
. . . evidence that amounted to no more than . . .

Supreme Court of Canada, Her Majesty the Queen v. Alexander Nikolovski.
. . . narratives really . . .

Michael Gleghorn, Was Jesus Really Born of a Virgin?
. . . narratives, moreover, . . .

Lawrence Warner, Genesis the Giant: The City, the Wanderer, and the Sodomite in Late-Medieval Narrative.
. . . that 'bristled with ambiguities,' . . .

U.S. Supreme Court, Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., et al.
. . . in favor of the view that his patients, and therefore the analyst, had no sure way of knowing whether the events they remembered had actually taken place or not.

John Forrester, Dispatches from The Freud Wars: Psychoanalysis and Its Passions.
I could make a pretty report about . . .

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
. . . some of the reviews.

K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
Would you believe it?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
According to one reviewer, "Masson the promising psychoanalytic scholar emerges gradually, as a grandiose egotist—

U.S. Supreme Court, Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., et al. quoting Robert Coles, M.D., Freudianism Confronts Its Malcontents (Boston Globe).
“a man swollen with vanity and presumption”

Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner quoting a correspondent from the Berlin Nationalzeitung.
—mean-spirited, self-serving, full of braggadocio, impossibly arrogant and, in the end, a self-destructive fool. . . ."

U.S. Supreme Court, Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., et al. quoting Robert Coles, M.D., Freudianism Confronts Its Malcontents (Boston Globe).
So this is what comes from the lying newspaper reports!

Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Monday, June 18, 1877).
Having a talent is not enough: one requires your permission for it—right, my friends?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
Believe’t, . . .

William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra.
. . . one writing . . .

Amy Lowell, Men, Women and Ghosts.
. . . was full of the most . . .

Edith Nesbit, The Story of the Treasure Seekers.
. . . unconscionable breaches of basic rules of quoting, culminating at least once in . . .

K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius (1971).
. . . the author . . .

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Devil in Manuscript.
. . . "quoting" the very opposite of what . . .

K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius (1971).
. . . the subject . . .

Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius.
. . . had actually said . . .

K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius (1971).
. . . so as to give the impression that I had said some such thing, . . .

Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Thursday, July 9, 1874).
—I know not what—

George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan.
. . . thereby offending . . .

Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Thursday, July 9, 1874).
. . . the whole psychoanalytic establishment

Janet Malcolm, In The Freud Archives.
Very pitiful stuff—

Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Thursday, July 9, 1874).
In general, quotation marks around a passage indicate to the reader that the passage reproduced the speaker's words verbatim. They inform the reader that he or she is reading the statement of the speaker, not a paraphrase or other indirect interpretation by an author. By providing this information, quotations add authority to the statement and credibility to the author's work . . .

U.S. Supreme Court, Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., et al. (1991).
. . . by means of . . .

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.
. . . what I would like to call "the charisma of the quotation mark."

K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius (1971).
I can see now how impossible it is for a person to remain decent when he happens to be a journalist.

Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, September 30, 1869).
There is honor even among thieves, as a man from whom I had expected a particularly dastardly transgression assured me. The reader who is not expert is at the mercy of . . .

K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius (1971).
. . . the Reviewer . . .

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species.
. . . when the latter puts a sentence into quotation marks. Honor requires a maximal scrupulousness: once the reader cannot rely on quotations, the whole transaction is bound to go into bankruptcy.

K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius (1971).
I ask you:

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura.
What crime of doubt could be greater than that which would rob you of credence?

Richard Wagner, Lohengrin.
His reputation had . . .

William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 11).
. . . been shattered by . . .

Henry Miller, Man In The Zoo: George Grosz’ Ecce Homo.
. . . psychoanalytic character assassination.

E. James Lieberman, Acts of Will.
He was . . .

William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 11).
. . .demeaned in public and private, in plain words and in jargon, in professional and lay circles. . .
E. James Lieberman, Acts of Will.
. . . and his opinions were . . .

William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 11).
. . . received with . . .

Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
. . . contempt, ridicule or obloquy.

U.S. Supreme Court, Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., et al. (1991).
What did I have to say to that?

J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
"I'll tell you this. . . ."

Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman.
Put bluntly, . . .

Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul.
"They can all go to Hell."

J. Moussaieff Masson, Freud and the Seduction Theory quoting Sigmund Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess.
Period. End quote.

U.S. House of Representatives, Hearings of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
With these words, he . . .

Charles Dickens, The Schoolboy’s Story.
. . . expressed what is essential in his story.

Dan Levin, Spinoza.
He had conceived his . . .

Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
. . . Assault . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . in defiance, written it in defiance, and published it in defiance. This was the stance he thought proper to a discoverer at odds all his life with the "compact majority."

Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.—

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
" . . . a great scholar, a major analyst—"

U.S. Supreme Court, Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., et al. (1991) quoting Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
Oh yes!

Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
. . . a great scholar . . .

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols.
But note . . .

Franz Kafka, The Trial.
In the end, to be sure—

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
"It's got nothing to do with me. It's got to do with the things I discovered."

Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
I was the first to discover the truth by being the first to experience lies as lies—

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
. . . carefully constructed lies, . . .

George Orwell, 1984.
. . . smelling them out.—My genius is in my nostrils.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
I found the temptation of making my withheld knowledge accessible to the world irresistible . . .

Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism.
But my truth is terrible; for so far one has called lies truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
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