Reviews for Freud's Wizard: Ernest Jones and the Transformation of Psychoanalysis

The average rating for Freud's Wizard: Ernest Jones and the Transformation of Psychoanalysis based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-05-09 00:00:00 Mercer Bush The story of "Freud and Jung" was well-established in the public consciousness even before the recent film A Dangerous Method. Less known, though, is the story of "Freud and Jones". As an undergraduate, I remember being intrigued by the presence of a Welshman in various group photographs of the early psychoanalysts; I was aware that Jones had rescued Freud from the Nazis in Vienna, and that he had written a biography of Freud, but very little beyond that. Maddox's highly-readable biography fills a gap in my knowledge which I was barely aware was so wide Jones was first and foremost indeed "Freud's Wizard", but he was much more than just a sidekick. Laurence Olivier's film of Hamlet owes a debt to Jones' book Hamlet and Oedipus; Jones' three-volume biography of Freud (started at the age of seventy and concluded shortly before the end of his own life) was a publishing sensation; and as President of the British Psycho-Analytical Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association he was tireless in his efforts to establish psychoanalysis, and to rescue Jewish colleagues in 1930s Europe. Jones never quite became Freud's heir; as Maddox notes, that position would eventually be taken by Freud's daughter Anna. Despite his respect for Freud, and, at one stage, a plan to woo Anna, Jones found himself unable to disagree with criticisms of Anna made by Melanie Klein. Psychoanalysts are not shy about pointing out each other's supposed character flaws in ways that are frank to the point of rudeness; correspondence between Freud and Jones is at times remarkably techy, and occasionally even hostile. Jones' suggestion that Anna had been "imperfectly analysed" caused Freud particular offence. Jones in his turn was outraged when a posthumous foreword by Freud appeared which named David Eder, rather than Jones, as the first to practise psychoanalysis in the English-speaking world. Jones was raised in Wales, but his medical training was completed at University College Hospital in London. As a doctor, he found it difficult to get established, and his career nearly came to an early end when he was accused of sexual behaviour while examining children at a school. The case was "laughed out of court", according to Maddox; the testimony of lower-class children was not taken seriously. Discovering Freud, and meeting Jung in Amsterdam, radically changed his prospects. There were several loves in his life: an early engagement was broken off, and he entered into a relationship with Loe Kann, a wealthy Dutch emigrée. Today we would describe her as Jones' "partner"; Maddox uses the contemporary terms "common law wife" and "mistress". Kann was addicted to morphine due to a kidney condition and went to Freud for analysis; the treatment was successful, but Kann then left Jones for another man (an American, also called Jones). Maddox inaccurately describes Kann's brother Jacobus as having "founded the Jewish Chronicle"; in fact, he financed the purchase of the paper in 1907. Jones then took up with Loe's servent Lina (surname unknown), before marrying a young Welsh poet and composer named Morfydd Owen. Owen died from complications from appendicitis less than two years later; Jones then was warned off Anna Freud by Sigmund, and Hanns Sachs fixed him up with Kitty Jokl (Jokl's sister Grete Ilm, made by a typo or slip into "Gretl Ilm", is described as Sachs' "mistress"). Jokl very quickly became Jones' second wife and assistant, and their children included the novelist Mervyn Jones. Another interesting family connection is that Jones' sister married the surgeon Wilfred Trotter (later honorary surgeon to the king), with whom Jones had been in practice for a while. Maddox tells us that Jones was wary of getting too close to the Bloomsbury crowd, but he worked with James and Alix Strachey on the translation of Freud's works, and his biography of Freud was published in the UK by the Hogarth Press. Jones also treated Frieda Lawrence, wife of D.H.; Jones was "perhaps the only person in London who knew of Frieda's colourful past in Munich and her affair with Otto Gross" (Gross had also impregnated Frieda's sister Elsa von Richthofen; perhaps to avoid playing "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", Maddox doesn't mention Elsa's affairs with Max Weber and his brother Alfred). Maddox's account of the writing and publication of Jones' biography of Freud is unexpectedly compelling. Jones' wife's assistance was invaluable, especially as Jones could not read the gothic script of much of the correspondence. Apparently there were concerns about British libel law (even today the bane of free speech). The distinguished lawyer Peter Calvocoressi recommended that the sentence "Jung is crazy" would have to go, but that accusing Jung of anti-Semitism was merely "risky".

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-14 00:00:00 William Bitting Brenda Maddox's "Freud's Wizard: Ernest Jones and the Transformation of Psychoanalysis" (Da Capo Press, 354 pages, $26) poses a fundamental question about biography: To what extent do ideas, or, more specifically, the spread of ideas, depend on personalities? Freud himself wondered whether or not his new "science" of psychoanalysis would travel beyond turn-of-the century Vienna, Austria, and become something more than an exclusively Jewish enterprise. At first Carl Jung seemed to be the gentile vehicle for Freudian ideas, but he became a rival. Ernest Jones, a Celtic Welshman turned Anglophile, proved an antidote to renegades such as Jung who broke out of Freud's tight circle and sought to establish their own therapeutic regimes. Jones was a kind of wizard (his mother had wanted to name him Merlin). He was a good mobilizer with a knack for establishing organizations that furthered Freudian ideas. He wrote in an accessible style that enticed influential readers ' his book on Hamlet and Oedipus impressed both James Joyce and Laurence Olivier. But Jones was not merely a popularizer. He had a magnetic personality that attracted women. He courted Freud's daughter, Anna, and though his suit was not successful, it demonstrated how powerfully he wished to impose his personality on Freud's movement as well as his intimates. Jones's erotic adventures often got him into trouble, but Freud understood that Jones was the indispensable disciple, worth any amount of trouble. Jones repaid his mentor's trust during Freud's moment of peril in Vienna. Ms. Maddox begins her biography by tersely evoking Jones's mission in March 1938 to save the founder of psychoanalysis. Hitler had entered Vienna the day before. His views of psychoanalysis as a Jewish virus were well known. Jones understood that if Freud did not leave Vienna he might well be murdered. Commercial flights to Vienna from London had been canceled. The enterprising Jones hired a private plane and managed to enter the city, only to be arrested. Fluent in German, he talked his way out of incarceration. It took him nearly a week to convince Freud to abandon the city that meant everything to him. Freud did not relent until Jones promised to spirit his master's immediate family and associates out of Nazi-occupied Vienna. Not only did Jones succeed in this daunting task, he got the British government to approve work permits for these refugees at a time when public opinion in Britain was opposed to exiles whose arrival increased competition for precious jobs. Where did Jones get his chutzpah? He liked to joke that he was a "Shabbes-Goy" who does the work Jews are not allowed to perform on the Sabbath." Jones had grown up in Wales at a time when a bright boy yearned to assimilate into British culture. Yet he never lost his Welsh character, a feistiness he shared with his hard-working father. Jones rejected a place at Oxford for medical studies in London and Cardiff, Wales. Interested in brain neurology, Jones found Freud's ideas captivating and adapted them to his own purposes. That Jones became Freud's biographer, writing an elegant three-volume biography, seems inevitable in retrospect. The Freud biography perfectly expressed Jones's desire to honor his master even as Jones advanced his own life's work. Jones's story, Ms. Maddox notes, has been told before by Jones's friend Vincent Brome, and she might have added another word or two about her predecessor, an author of several biographies to whom many of us are deeply indebted. But Ms. Maddox is right that much new material has appeared since Brome published his biography in 1982, and she pays handsome tribute to the scholars who have enriched her work. Ms. Maddox herself has a special place among current biographers. She has a knack for picking figures like Nora Joyce, for example, who are slightly off-center, but without whose presence the story of a James Joyce or a Sigmund Freud would be immeasurably diminished. Her approach to biography did not seem essential when she first began work on Nora Joyce. Richard Ellmann, the distinguished Joyce biographer, doubted Ms. Maddox would have enough material for a full-scale biography. But Ellmann acknowledged that Ms. Maddox had proved him wrong. While Ms. Maddox does not face the same skepticism with "Freud's Wizard," it is important to realize how her work has re-centered the enterprise of biography, broadening and deepening its reach into the panoply of personalities that surround and sustain the Freuds and Joyces who once seemed a force unto themselves.