8 The Ultimate Betrayal Sexual Misconduct in the Helping Professions I swear by Apollo the physician…never do harm to anyone. —Hippocratic oath S inger and songwriter Barbara Noël wakened slowly from sleep induced by the sodium amobarbital administered by her psychiatrist, Dr. Jules Masserman, former president of the American Psychiatric Association. Many times before, during the course of her 18 years of office treatments with Dr. Masserman, she had returned from deep sleep, but this time the awakening was shockingly different. A man was over her, and he was breathing deeply. As her consciousness brightened, she could feel his breath on her shoulder. Still under the influence of the amobarbital, she stirred and moaned. The breathing stopped and the man lifted his body carefully away. Fearing that the man might turn violent if he were discovered, Noël pretended to be asleep. Moments later, she opened her eyes a bit and saw a man standing at the sink, with his back to her. He was bald and tanned except for his white buttocks. To her horror, she recognized that it was Dr. Masserman. She could even hear the coins jingling in his pockets as he put on his trousers. Then she heard him walk over to her, pull up her underpants, and then carefully tuck the sheets around her and leave the room, closing the door behind him. She fell back to sleep. Some time 163 164 Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream later, the lights in the room flipped on and off. This was the customary way that Dr. Masserman had always awakened her from her amobarbital-induced deep sleeps. In her book You Must Be Dreaming, Noël describes this scene and alleges that Dr. Masserman behaved toward her in other ways that were questionable and inappropriate to the doctor-patient relationship. Upon return from his travels, he would bring her coins, trinkets, Bach records, and other gifts. He gave her copies of his articles, poems, and music. He invited her to go sailing on his yacht and to fly in his airplane. Noël says she was uncomfortable but flattered by his attention. She accepted only one of his invitations while she was his patient, and that was to accompany him to Paris. There, as president-elect of the World Congress of Social Psychiatry, he was the host of an evening reception. She acted as his hostess. Noël had no idea that Dr. Masserman, as president of the American Psychiatric Association, had condemned sexual relationships between psychiatrists and their patients. When she finally understood what had been happening to her, Noël had to overcome the disbelief of detectives, lawyers, and therapists, who dismissed her story as the erotic dream of an unstable woman infatuated with her psychiatrist. She finally managed to find attorneys who would bring suit on her behalf, and when she did, there was a firestorm because of Dr. Masserman’s standing and prominence. He had written 16 books and 410 articles, had been president of the American Psychiatric Association and had previously been president of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, the American Society for Group Therapy, the Illinois Psychiatric Society, the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society, the American Association for Social Psychiatry, and was an Honorary Life President of the World Association for Social Psychiatry. Dr. Masserman denied all charges of sexual misconduct brought against him by Noël and three other former patients, all of whom described a similar pattern of having been sexually abused while they were under the influence of sodium amobarbital. Noël’s attorneys later stated that 10 other women had also come forward with similar allegations against Dr. Masserman but had not wanted to join the suits. They did not want to undergo the further traumas that would be associated with litigation.