Jeffrey Masson

Masson is a veganism advocate and has written about animal rights.

• Name — Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson • Birth Name — Jeffrey Lloyd Masson • Born — 28 March 1941 • Education — Harvard University • Subject — Psychoanalysis • Notable Work — The Assault on Truth (1984)

Jeffrey Masson is the son of Jacques Masson, a Frenchman of Bukharian Jewish ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger from an Ashkenazi Orthodox Jewish family. Masson's great-grandfather Shlomo Moussaieff was a kabbalist and founder of the Bukharian Quarter in Jerusalem. His grandfather Henry Mousaieff changed his family name from Moussaieff to Masson. Masson changed his middle name from Lloyd to Moussaieff. Both of his parents were followers of the guru Paul Brunton. Masson's mother later became a follower of mystic and philosopher John Levy. During the 1940s and 1950s, Brunton often lived with them, eventually designating Masson as his heir apparent. In 1956, Diana and Jacques Masson moved to Uruguay because Brunton believed that a third world war was imminent. Jeffrey and his sister Linda followed in 1959.

At Brunton's urging, Masson went to Harvard University to study Sanskrit. While at Harvard, Masson became disillusioned with Brunton. Brunton and his influence on the Masson family form the subject of Masson's autobiographical book My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion. Harvard University granted Masson a B.A. magna cum laude in 1964 and a PhD with Honors in 1970. His degrees were in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. While undertaking his PhD, Masson also studied, supported by fellowships, at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Calcutta, and the University of Poona.

Masson taught Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the University of Toronto, 1969–80, reaching the rank of Professor. From 1981 to 1992, he was a Research Associate, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland. He later became Projects Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives and the author of numerous books, many about animals.

Since the early 1990s, Masson has written a number of books on the emotional life of animals, one of which, When Elephants Weep, has been translated into 20 languages. He has explained this radical change in the subject of his writings as follows: I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals. In 2008, Masson became a Director of Voiceless, the animal protection institute. "We are not encouraged, on a daily basis, to pay careful attention to the animals we eat. On the contrary, the meat, dairy, and egg industries all actively encourage us to give thought to our own immediate interest (taste, for example, or cheap food) but not to the real suffering involved.... The animals involved suffer agony because of our ignorance. The least we owe them is to lessen that ignorance". Masson also wrote a book about living in New Zealand, which includes an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary.

Masson is married to Leila Masson, a German pediatrician. They have two sons. He also has a daughter by a previous marriage with Therese Claire Masson. In the early 1990s, Masson had been engaged to University of Michigan feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who wrote the preface to his A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. Masson became a vegan in 2004. He is an animal rights activist.

• 1974. "India and the Unconscious: Erik Erikson on Gandhi," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 55: 519-26. Discussion by T. C. Sinha: 527. • 1974. "Sex and Yoga: Psychoanalysis and the Indian Religious Experience", Journal of Indian Philosophy 2: 307–320. Reprinted in Vishnu on Freud's Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, T.G. Vaidyanathan and Jeffrey J. Kripal, eds. Oxford University Press, Paperback (Edition: 2003) • 1976. "Perversions — some observations", Israel Ann. Psychiat. rel. Disc., (1976b), 14, 354–61. • 1976. (with Terri C. Masson) "The Navel of Neurosis: Trauma, Memory and Denial", paper presented to the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society • 1978. (with Terri C. Masson) "Buried Memories on the Acropolis. Freud's Relation to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism", International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 59: 199-208. • 1980. The Oceanic Feeling: The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India. • 1981. The Peacock's Egg: Love Poems from Ancient India, W. S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson, eds. • 1984. The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Farrar Straus & Giroux. • 1984. "Freud and the Seduction Theory: A challenge to the foundations of psychoanalysis," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1984. • 1985. (editor and translator) The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. • 1986. A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. • 1988. Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing. • 1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. • 1993. My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion, Addison-Wesley. • 1994. (with Susan McCarthy) When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals, Jonathan Cape. • 1995. "A Note on U.G. Krishnamurti" • 1996. Lost Prince: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. • 1997. Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs. • 1999. The Emperor's Embrace: Reflections on Animal Families and Fatherhood. • 2003. The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals. • 2002. The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart. • 2004. The Evolution of Fatherhood: A Celebration of Animal and Human Families. • 2004. Slipping into Paradise: Why I Live in New Zealand. • 2004. The Cat Who Came in from the Cold. Wheeler. • 2005. Raising the Peaceable Kingdom: What Animals Can Teach Us about the Social Origins of Tolerance and Friendship. • 2006. Altruistic Armadillos - Zen-Like Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals. • 2009. The Face on Your Plate: The Truth about Food. • 2010. "On Alice Miller" • 2010. The Dog Who Couldn't Stop Loving: How Dogs Have Captured Our Hearts for Thousands of Years. • 2010. (editor) Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams: The Illustrated Edition. • 2010 Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras-Understanding the World's Most Intriguing Animals. Skyhorse Publishing. • 2010 The Wild Child: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. • 2011 "Pornography and Animals", in • 2014 Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Origins of Good and Evil. Bloomsbury Publishing. • 2020 Lost Companions: Reflections on the Death of Pets. Murdoch Books.