The Archives were founded by Kurt R. Eissler in 1951, together with a group of people who knew Freud personally, including Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, Bertram Lewin and Hermann Nunberg.
[citation needed] By the 1980s, Eissler, with the help of Anna Freud, had expanded the collection to include thousands of items.
[citation needed] In 1981, Masson published a paper wherein he claimed that Freud's abandonment of his seduction theory had taken place for reasons not related to the scientific merit of the theory,[2] namely that Freud believed that granting the truth of his female patients' claims that they had been sexually abused would risk the reputation of the emerging psychoanalytic method.
"[2] Eissler was deeply shocked ("Just today Masud Khan called me from London and asked me to dismiss you from the Archives.
[6][7][8] The other current officers are Jennifer Stuart as President, Nellie L. Thompson as Secretary, and W. Craig Tomlinson as Treasurer.