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

The saturation of the English-speaking world with Freudian psychoanalytic concepts was due largely to one brilliant analyst, Ernest Jones. As Freud’s disciple, colleague, biographer, and empire builder, he led the international psychoanalytic movement and moved its vortex from Vienna to London, and its influence to Toronto, New York, and Boston. While negotiating the ferocious politics and rivalry of the movement, Jones also managed an imposing series of liaisons that included an heiress and her maid, analysands, and a “Druid Bride.” Jones, unlike Freud, never had to wonder “what do women want?” From Jones’s first encounter with Freud’s writings as a medical student to the eve of World War II, when he orchestrated the master’s escape to London a hairsbreadth away from the death camps, Maddox lays bare a dark and creative era, and a colorfully flawed but powerfully influential man.