January 24, 1984

Index clouds drift awayA2Diplomats estimate 60 have died in Moroccan riotsA2Bonn's military chiefs to discuss general's ousterA3Around the WorldA5 Government/PoliticsCommunist Party nominates Gus Hall and Angela DavisA9Reporter's notebook: Elevating Glenn's first in spaceA11Betty Lall to seek Congressional seat again in ManhattanB5 Washington TalkHandel's heyday in the capitalA18First principles of artful ambiguityA18Fortress on the alert in a siege by the unknownA18 Industry/LaborLenny Siegel, Silicon Valley's computer industry gadflyA8 Education/WelfareNinth graders improve scores on tests in ConnecticutB2 ReligionClergymen trade pulpits to aid religious unityB5 ObituariesEdward J. Daly, chairman of World AirwaysD25 GeneralAbortion foes rally in capitalA8Trial of Carolina Klansmen and American Nazis opensA12Army may resume wound testing of pigs and goatsA17State's chief judge urges 30 more judgeshipsA26Yale club pays homage to Elizabeth I on 425th anniversaryB113 are indicted in Manhattan on cocaine ring chargesB3

In a major victory for the Manville Corporation, United States Bankruptcy Judge Burton R. Lifland refused yesterday to dismiss the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings the company filed 17 months ago to try to resolve thousands of asbestos- related lawsuits against it. Judge Lifland also agreed to appoint someone to represent the thousands of future asbestos claimants the company expects. His decision is the first in the nation to say that courts can deal now with the claims that will arise as more workers develop the asbestos-related diseases that often do not manifest themselves until 20 or 30 years after exposure to asbestos. Such future claims - by some estimates, up to 100,000 new cases - were what motivated Manville's Aug. 26, 1982, bankruptcy filing.

The General Services Administration concluded in an official report today that Charles Z. Wick, director of the United States Information Agency, violated Federal regulations by secretly recording telephone calls. New Federal regulations will be proposed to restrict tape-recording a call without notifying all parties, according to Frank J. Carr, an Assistant Administrator of General Services, who prepared the report. There is no penalty for violating the Federal rules against secret recording. Other Regulations Cited Meanwhile, the Archivist of the United States said in a letter to the Information Agency that it might have violated other Federal regulations by routinely destroying transcripts of many of the telephone calls recorded since 1981.

The Supreme Court ruled today that states may carry out the death penalty without first conducting a special review to insure that the sentence is in line with other sentences imposed in the state for similar crimes. Ruling 7 to 2 in a California murder case, the Court said that the procedure known as ''proportionality review'' was required neither by its own death penalty precedents nor by the Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The decision, written by Associate Justice Byron R. White, overturned a ruling by the Federal appeals court in California. That court prevented California from executing Robert Alton Harris, who was convicted of killing two teen-age boys to use their car for a bank robbery, until the state's Supreme Court determined whether the sentence was proportional to other death sentences imposed in California for similar murders.

WHAT are we to make of it all? Dr. Jeffrey Masson, a Freudian scholar and provocative critic of the establishment, maintains that the light he has shed on the so-called seduction theory of Freud is, in effect, such a powerful attack on orthodox analysis that it will undo it. And the documents Dr. Masson unveiled point to a greater meanness of spirit than ever seen in Freud's official biographies as well as suggesting a previously unknown suppression of information. But the new scholarship on Sigmund Freud must be placed, after all, in the broad perspective of science history and in the context of an overall understanding of Freud's impact on psychotherapeutic thinking. It seems clear that Dr. Masson has added substantial new information and insights that increase our understanding of psychoanalysis and its origins. But it also seems clear, in the view of the experts on psychoanalysis - inside and outside of the establishment - who were interviewed in recent days, that he has overstated the implications of his work.