This account of a scandal in the world of New York psychoanalysis features: K.R. Eissler, a psychoanalyst and head of the Sigmund Freud archives; Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a scholar turned psychoanalyst and anti-Freudian; and Peter Swales, a former assistant to the Rolling Stones and self-taught Freud scholar. Masson, repeating history, sued Malcolm and her publishers. In an afterword written for this edition, Malcolm gives a concise history of the publicised, 11-million-dollar, 11-year lawsuit - which Masson lost in 1994 - and writes of the experience of becoming "another agent of Masson's chronic disappointment in the world."