Submitted by BRIAN BUCHBINDER, Nov 30, 2006 12:41

Dear Dr. Dworkin,

I read with interest your review of "Freud's Will to Power".

At one point you comment about Freud's initial theory that "hysteria" stemmed from widespread sexual abuse of children. While I find much of Jeffry Masson's work resistible, his volume on Freud's experience under Charcot at La Salpetriere (The Denial of Truth) reminds the reader that Freud during that early medical training saw actual physical evidence of child sexual abuse. When he later heard his patients speak of being sexually abused, he actually believed them, having seen the proof. For reasons that are still unclear, Freud revised his original belief in the actuality of sexual abuse. He came to believe that the stories he was being told were factually untrue. As to the numbers, since he saw only patients, his sample would have been skewed to those who had indeed experienced abuse. He need not have assumed that abuse was more extensive than warranted by his biased sampling. Masson posits a personal motive for Freud's change of theory, having to do with his relationship with Wilhelm Fliess. Whatever the reason for the change, it could not have been motivated by ignorance of abuse's prevalence.

Having worked for years as a crminal attorney, I can tell you that sexual abuse is if anything, more widespread than even Freud believed. Had Freud held to his original beliefs, which as I said, were fully supported by medical evidence, perhaps we would not be dealing with the subject in a public way only fairly recently

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