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PARTISAN REVIEW
this sense
Freud and h is Fo llowers
picks up where
Brother Animal
left
off. Now, however, Roazen has a second fi gure to di spose o f and
discredit. T ha t fi gure is of course Ern est Jones. Recogni zing the
distinction o f Jones's work o n the one hand , he goes about hi s work o f
discredita ti on on the other as foll ows. In the opening pages of hi s first
volume Jones speaks of the reluctance he felt a t undertak ing th e huge
tas k of the biography and then gives hi s reasons for having yielded to
the sugges tion that he neverth eless undertake it. Roazen writes tha t
" Jones had been seeking thi s job for some yea rs," and refers to a letter
in th e Jones a rchives written in nineteen hundred fo rty-six by Jones to
a publisher in whi ch , acco rding to Roazen , " he eagerl y gave hi s
qualifica tions as Freud 's biographer. " T hi s permits Roazen to state
tha t " in p rint Jones sounds reluctant," meanin g th at he wasn 't, and
the inference must inevitabl y be drawn tha t Jones was not te llin g the
truth from the very outset and hence tha t wha t he says is suspect.
T hi s is utterl y typ ical of Roazen 's way og go ing about thin gs. Let
us leave to one side the method of innuendo and the irrep ress ibl e ill
will. Let us also accept the summa ry of the unq uo ted letter from the
Jones archives. Wh at is most striking about Roazen in thi s context is
hi s psychoanalyti ca l naivete.
It
is appa rentl y inconceiva ble to him tha t
when faced wi th the dauntin g prospect o f wri ti ng a life o f Freud , Jones
could have been ambiva lent himself, tha t he could have badl y wanted
to do it and also no t want to do it. (After all , Jones had written the
cl assic psychoanalytical study of
H am let. )
Indeed one can in part
understand some of Jones's idea li zing rema rks about Freud as an
excess ive response to the unconscious ambi va lence he had to have vis–
a-vis hi s own transference fi gure. But no, it's better to impl y mendacity.
Roazen continues in similar style: " Desp ite what a reader of the
biograph y mi ght be led to think , Jones's own rela ti on to Freud was
rela ti vely distant. Jones was first of all a Gentil e, and Freud coul d be
suspicio us o f non-Jews.... Furthermo re, Jones was in London and
therefore an outsider to events in Vi enna." I happen to have been a
reader o f Jones's biograph y, and wha t I was led to think was that Jo nes
was one of Freud 's earli est fo ll owers, the leader o f the movement in
England if no t the Engli sh- speaking world , and a member of the
ori gin al committee tha t was formed around Freud-after the u pheava ls
caused by the brea kings with Adl er and Jung - whose members were
commo nl y thought of as Freud 's seconds-in-command. I have no way
o f know ing whether tha t is rela ti vely cl ose o r rela ti vely di stant. There
is, however, ano ther bit of evidence tha t mi ght be relevant. On the
occasion of Jones's fifti eth birthday in nineteen hundred twenty-nine,
Freud wro te him a letter whi ch contain s the fo ll ow ing passage:
