Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Susan McCarthy

A study of the complex emotional lives of animals provides insights into and anecdotes about the existence of animal emotions and offers an analysis of the ways humans treat animals

The Emotional Lives of Animals

When Elephants Weep

Peter Wohlleben

Love, Grief, and Compassion -- Surprising Observations of a Hidden World

The Inner Life of Animals

Explores humanity's relationship with animals that are cultivated for food, discussing the moral, health, and environmental consequences of meat consumption as well as how eating meat is regarded in a variety of cultures.

The Truth about Food

The Face on Your Plate

The author of When Elephants Weep examines the complex emotional lives of barnyard creatures, exploring evidence of such feelings as love, loyalty, friendship, sadness, sorrow, and grief, and draws on his own experiences and observations, as well as scientific research, history, and literature to reveal the intelligence and emotions of these animals. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

The Emotional World of Farm Animals

The Pig who Sang to the Moon

Orcas (or killer whales) are one of the planet's supreme predators. Alongside humans, they have the most complex brains to be found in nature. But while one of these two species has killed 200 million members of its own kind in the twentieth century alone, the other has killed none. This is where Jeffrey Masson's fascinating new book begins: there is something different about humans. Masson has shown us that animals can teach us much about our own emotions - about love (dogs), contentment (cats) and grief (elephants). But they have much to teach us about the negative emotions such as anger and aggression as well, and in unexpected ways. In Beasts he demonstrates that the violence we perceive in the 'wild' is mostly a matter of projection. We link the basest human behaviour to animals, to 'beasts', and claim the high ground for our species. We are least 'human', we think, when we succumb to our primitive, animal instincts. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Animal predators kill to survive, but there is nothing in the annals of animal aggression remotely equivalent to the violence mankind has inflicted upon itself. Humans, and humans in our modern industrialised world in particular, are the most violent species in existence. We lack what all other animals have: a check on aggression that serves the species rather than destroys it. And it is here that animals have something vitally important to teach us about ourselves.

What Animals Can Teach Us about Human Nature

Beasts

A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals

Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras

The Emperors Embrace Reflections On Animal Families And Fatherhood

حين تبكي الأفيال

Offers evidence of emotions throughout the animal kingdom and evaluates humans' treatment of animals--from hunting to eating them--in light of this discovery.

Why I Live in New Zealand

Slipping into Paradise

Reveals the remarkable depth of canine emotional complexity, explaining how dogs' sense of smell shapes their perception of reality and how they express such emotions as gratitude, loneliness, and love. Reprint. 100,000 first printing. Tour.

Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs

Dogs Never Lie about Love

This interpretation of the way female sexuality was viewed by the nineteenth-century European medical profession characterizes an attitude based on massive ignorance and prejudice

Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century

A Dark Science

Il maiale che cantava alla luna. La vita emotiva degli animali da fattoria

La vita emotiva dei gatti. Un viaggio nel cuore del felino

Reflections on the Death of Pets

Lost Companions

In 1896, Sigmund Freud presented his revolutionary "seduction theory," arguing that acts of sexual abuse and violence inflicted on children are the direct cause of adult mental illness. Nine years later, Freud completely reversed his position, insisting that these sexual memories were actually fantasies that never happened. Why did Freud retract the seduction theory? And why has the psychoanalytic community gone to such lengths to conceal that retraction? In this landmark book, drawing on his unique access to formerly sealed and hidden papers, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson dares to uncover the truth about this critical turning point in Freud's career and its enduring impact on the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. The Assault on Truth reveals a reality that neither Freud nor his followers could bear to face. Bracing in its honesty, gripping in its revelations, this is the book that prompted Masson's break with the psychoanalytic community-and launched his subsequent brilliant career as an independent thinker and writer."

The Assault on Truth

Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory

Freud, the Assault on Truth

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s groundbreaking bestseller, When Elephants Weep, was the first book since Darwin’s time to explore emotions in the animal kingdom, particularly from animals in the wild. Now, he focuses exclusively on the contained world of the farm animal, revealing startling, irrefutable evidence that barnyard creatures have feelings too, even consciousness. Weaving history, literature, anecdotes, scientific studies, and Masson’s own vivid experiences observing pigs, cows, sheep, goats, and chickens over the course of five years, this important book at last gives voice, meaning, and dignity to these gentle beasts that are bred to be milked, shorn, butchered, and eaten. Can we ever know what makes an animal happy? Many animal behaviorists say no. But Jeffrey Masson has a different view: An animal is happy if it can live according to its own nature. Farm animals suffer greatly in this regard. Chickens, for instance, like to perch in trees at night, to avoid predators and to nestle with friends. The obvious conclusion: They cannot be happy when confined twenty to a cage. From field and barn, to pen and coop, Masson bears witness to the emotions and intelligence of these remarkable farm animals, each unique with distinct qualities. Curious, intelligent, self-reliant–many will find it hard to believe that these attributes describe a pig. In fact, there is much that humans share with pigs. They dream, know their names, and can see colors. Mother cows mourn the loss of their calves when their babies are taken away to slaughter. Given a choice between food that is nutritious or lacking in minerals, sheep will select the former, balancing their diet and correcting the deficiency. Goats display quite a sense of humor, dignity, and fearlessness (Indian goats have been known to kill leopards). Chickens are naturally sociable–they will gather around a human companion and stand there serenely preening themselves or sit quietly on the ground beside someone they trust. For far too long farm animals have been denigrated and treated merely as creatures of instinct rather than as sentient beings. Shattering the abhorrent myth of the “dumb animal without feelings,” Jeffrey Masson has written a revolutionary book that is sure to stir human emotions far and wide.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

About

Books

Join the club