Jeff Masson

Jeffrey Masson Vanessa Clarke

I

f I had to choose one word to describe Jeff Masson (pronounced Mason), it would be ‘enthusiastic’ – definitely a Tigger rather than an Eeyore. If he likes what he sees or hears, if he finds a new idea fascinating or important, he will make it clear in a very straightforward way – which may be why animals like him and why his many books are so popular with his human audience. If he likes you, you will almost certainly like him. The other side of the coin – I won’t call it the downside because it is equally important, if not more so – is that if Jeff sees something he believes is wrong or cruel or dishonest, he will say so equally fearlessly. Not surprisingly, this has led to a few interesting career changes, not to mention the occasional witch hunt, though never a change of heart: a lifelong champion of the underdog, whether on two legs or four, his compassion for the victims of abuse is as strong now as when he was dismissed from the prestigious Freud Archives for seeing too much too clearly and, worse still, shouting about it, just as Joan Court (see page 17) sacrificed a brilliant career at the NSPCC by highlighting the reality of child abuse when those in authority were unwilling to do so.

12

The Vegan l Summer 2009

“ ...in his latest book, The Face on Your Plate, Jeff turns his formidable investigative powers on the extent of the denial practised by the purveyors and consumers of animal ‘products’ and the way people manage to avoid the truths that are staring them in the face.”

When I first introduced Jeff and family to Nitin Mehta at the Young Indian Vegetarians celebration in Hyde Park on Millennium Eve and watched Nitin’s two young daughters (now gifted adults) zooming Jeff’s toddler son across the frosted grass in his buggy, I had no idea that Jeff himself had been deeply immersed in all things Indian virtually from birth, having been raised as a disciple of Paul Brunton – at that time regarded as an enlightened guru rather than the purveyor of fantasy (he claimed to come from another planet) and woolly mysticism that Jeff eventually realised him to be. Brunton declared that Jeff’s father was a reincarnation of a medieval Kabbalist called Althodas (Jeff’s great-grandfather Shlomo Moussaieff had actually been a Kabbalist in Bukhara, Uzbekistan) and Jeff’s own education was virtually handed over to this man, including fasting and meditation from the age of five, plenty of chanting, numerous trips to India and the promise of magical powers – a heady mixture for an impressionable child. Brunton exerted an extraordinary power over his followers, persuading many of them (including Jeff’s parents) to seek refuge in South America to avoid an imminent Third World War.

By the time Jeff reached university age, he had seen through Brunton and denounced him enthusiastically, to the mortification of his parents who may well have reached the same conclusion by then but were too polite to say so. Equally enthusiastically, he bounced up to a bemused Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and asked for the name of his guru. It had not occurred to him that anyone could study and teach this wonderful ancient language without having a spiritual master to guide them. Nevertheless, he persevered with his studies, obtained a PhD and became Professor of Sanskrit at Toronto University from 1970 to 1980. During this time he underwent psychoanalysis and trained to be a psychotherapist himself. As Projects Director of the prestigious Freud Archive, he met Anna Freud and other big names in the movement, gained access to many of Freud’s unpublished letters and began to question the Master’s change of direction on child abuse. Why had Freud suddenly recanted and proclaimed that the abuses which surfaced in analysis were not true memories but fantasies, the all too real traumas mere Träume or dreams? Did he fear the loss of patients and patronage if he continued to insist on the existence, nay ubiquity, of child sex abuse in face of the denial of middle-class Vienna? Jeff had no such fears: he spoke his mind and lost his job, as Joan Court had lost hers at the NSPCC a decade earlier.

Books by Jeff Masson include: On his early life: My Father’s Guru. On psychoanalysis: The Assault on Truth; Final Analysis. On animal emotions: DogsNever Lie About Love; When Elephants Weep; The Pig Who Sang to the Moon. On veganism: The Face on Your Plate.

Given this background, it is not surprising that in his latest book, The Face on Your Plate, Jeff turns his formidable investigative powers on the extent of the denial practised by the purveyors and consumers of animal ‘products’ and the way people manage to avoid the truths that are staring them in the face. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is a powerful facilitator of the worst of human behaviour, from bombing nurseries and hospitals to incarcerating and torturing humans and animals in conditions most people find it upsetting to think about, let alone to witness. Hence the pictures of smiling pigs, happy cows and fluffy brown chickens giving the lie to the way in which the anonymous packets of flesh on display actually lived and died. Nor is it possible nowadays to claim that ‘they’ (slaves, women, animals, whoever it is we want to treat as objects rather than equals) don’t have the same feelings as ‘us’, the fortunate minority. Jeff has seen to that with his numerous and popular books on animal emotions – Dogs Never Lie About Love, When Elephants Weep and The Pig who Sang to the Moon are perhaps the best known – and science has increasingly vindicated the view that we are not so very different from those whom we choose to regard as food rather than friends.

Meet Jeff in person at a free Vegan Society sponsored event Saturday 20th June 2.30-5 pm, Dragon Hall, 17 Stukeley Street, Covent Garden, London Official UK launch of Jeffrey Masson’s new book The Face on Your Plate (see review page 32). Talk by the author, questions, book signing. Food by Vegan Campaigns. Admission free. Sponsored by the Vegan Society. For further details call 020 7928 7459 or email [email protected] Sunday 21st June 2.30-5.30 pm, Friends Meeting House, 43 St Giles, Oxford. Garden party, talk, questions and book signing. Admission free. Bring vegan food to share. Organised by OxVeg/VERO To reserve a place, email [email protected] or

Just as we visited Farm Animal Rescue Sanctuary (www.farmanimalrescue.org.uk) to meet the late, great Wiggy in pursuit of material for The Pig who Sang to the Moon, we hope that when Jeff and family come to visit in June it will be possible to take time out from his busy schedule of talks to visit Hugletts Wood Farm, a vegan cow protection sanctuary in Sussex (www.huglettswoodfarm.com). It would be a pity not to spend at least some time with the non-human animals whose rights and welfare Jeff has defended so powerfully over the past two decades. And who knows, after communing with the very special Hugletts herd, he may just feel another book coming on...

call 01395 579353 Monday 22nd June 7.15-9 pm The Bath House, Gwydir Street, Cambridge (short walk from station). Talk by Jeffrey Masson, discussion and social. Food by the Granarchists. Admission free. Organised by CamVeg/CAR. Contact 01223 324337 or [email protected] on.co.uk

The Vegan l Summer 2009

13