The Complete Correspondence Of Sigmund Freud And Ernest Jones 1908 1939

Soon after their first meeting in 1908, Freud's future biographer, Ernest Jones, initiated a correspondence with the founder of psychoanalysis that would continue until Freud's death in London in 1939. Jones, a Welsh-born neurologist, would become a principal player in the development of psychoanalysis in England and the United States. This volume makes available from British and American archives nearly seven hundred previously unpublished letters, postcards, and telegrams, the vast majority of the three-decade correspondence between Freud and his admiring younger colleague. These letters and notes, dashed off almost compulsively in the odd moments of busy professional lives in Toronto, Vienna, and London, in transit between meetings, or on holidays on the Continent, provide a lively account of the early years of the psychoanalytic movement and its fortunes during the turbulent interwar period. The reader is invited to share in the domestic and international news of the day, to make the acquaintance of the prominent personalities among the first generation of Freud's followers, and to witness the drama of complex rivalries and conflicting loyalties - including the personal and intellectual rupture between Freud and Jung, and Jones's unrelenting effort to maneuver politically "behind the scenes" in order to position himself within Freud's inner circle. Present in the correspondence also are the women who in differing ways touched the lives of both men and influenced their work - Loe Kann, Joan Riviere, Melanie Klein, and Anna Freud. While charting the progress of a personal friendship, this correspondence offers glimpses of the darker events of the time - the last days of theAustro-Hungarian Empire, the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the rise of Nazism in Europe. Even though on a professional level the two correspondents differed on a striking array of issues - such as the theory of anxiety, the death and aggressive instincts, child analysis, female sexuality, and lay analysis - their letters are an affirmation of the intellectual and emotional bonds between these two very different men, who, as Jones put it so poignantly in his last letter to Freud, had "both made a contribution to human existence - even if in very different measure".

The Ferenczi-Jones correspondence presented here is an important document of the early history of psychoanalysis. It spans more than two decades, and addresses many of the relevant issues of the psychoanalytic movement between 1911-1933, such as Freud's relation to Stekel, Adler and Jung; the First World Wa;, the debates of the 1920s regarding the theoretical and technical ideas of Rank and Ferenczi; problems of leadership, structure, and finding a centre for the psychoanalytical movement; as well as issues related to telepathy and lay analysis. It includes thirty-seven letters and six postcards, as well as original documents waiting to be found for eight decades; these belong to the 'private', personal history of psychoanalysis and help to decode diverse aspects of the experience preserved in these documentary memories of former generations.Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this correspondence is how it allows us to build up a far more nuanced picture of the development of an extraordinary relationship between Ferenczi and Jones. It could hardly be termed harmonious, and was not devoid of rivalry and jealousy, sometimes even of hidden passion and outright hostility. Nevertheless, friendship, sympathy, collegiality and readiness for cooperation were just as important for Ferenczi and Jones as rivalry, mistrust and suspicion. This volume celebrates the 100th anniversary of the foundation in 1913 of both the British and the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Societies.

The contributors to this book have drawn on different mentors to provide a framework for understanding the sexual problems of the couples they see, and to inform the work they do. But whether Freud, Jung, Klein or Bowlby has been the progenitor of their own particular therapeutic narrative, the spirit of enquiry and curiosity is evident in their approach. This has created space to explore the dimensions of sex, love, hate and power in ways that allow the facts of life to emerge and be discovered as something unique and authentic to each couple. It has also created a platform from which new understandings may emerge to inform practice in the future.

The author was an important and influential early member of Freud's inner circle of trusted colleagues. As such, he played a significant part in the establishment of psychoanalysis as a recognised and respected discipline.

In this compellingly written and meticulously researched new book, Professor Brett Kahr draws upon extensive unpublished archival sources and upon his four decades of oral history interviews to paint fascinating portraits of many of the icons of mental health. Unearthing Freud's Death Bed and Laing's Missing Tooth: Hidden Histories of British Psychoanalysis includes detailed accounts of Kahr's interviews with such noted figures as Enid Balint, Marion Milner, Ronald Laing, John Bowlby and his wife, Ursula Longstaff Bowlby, as well as numerous members of Donald Winnicott's family. Framed as a series of glimpses into the early history of British psychoanalysis, Kahr explores how the German-speaking Sigmund Freud learned how to psychoanalyse English-speaking patients; how Enid Eichholz (the future wife of Michael Balint) pioneered couple psychoanalysis in the wake of the Second World War; how Donald Winnicott treated "The Piggle" in the midst of his own health crises; and how Masud Khan degenerated from a clinical sage into an anti-Semite. A breathtaking combination of interviews, reminiscences, and well-documented scholarship, this book provides a gripping overview of many of the key figures in British psychoanalysis, all of whom made unparalleled contributions to the mental health profession, and whose lives and careers deserve to be visited and revisited.