Sigmund Freud once complained that many biographers idealize their subjects and thus "forgo the opportunity of penetrating into the most fascinating secrets of human nature." His own biographer need have no guilt feelings on this score. British Psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, the only loyal survivor of Freud's original disciples, reveres the Master of Psychoanalysis ; yet he is able to probe for many of the most fascinating secrets of Freud's nature. The first volume of Jones's projected three-volume biography (TIME, Oct. 19, 1953) took the subject through his youth—including such matters as breast-feeding and sibling rivalry. The present volume-continues Freud's fascinating case history, taking him up to the age of 63. It shows Freud moving in on the new century whose soul he was to haunt and, in large measure, to dominate.
Sex in the Cradle. Says Biographer Jones flatly: "In 1901 Freud, at the age of 45, had attained complete maturity a consummation of development that few people really achieve." Jones credits this victory over neurotic disturbances, including inferiority feelings, to the "imperishable feat" of the four-year self-analysis that Freud began in 1897.
Less devout Freudian psychologists may question whether Freud's maturity was as complete as Jones describes—and they can do so on the basis of Psychiatrist Jones's own evidence. There is no denying that Freud needed all the maturity he could muster in the first years of the 20th century. After years of obscurity, he became a world figure, denounced from pulpit and scientific platform alike as a menace to morality, a threat to religion and even to civilization itself.
Freud had already published his masterpiece, The Interpretation of Dreams. In 1905 came a slim, paper-covered booklet, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. In its most startling section, Freud argued that the infant is capable of erotic sensations from the beginning of life. It took more than four years to sell 1,000 copies; after a dozen years and three editions' Freud's monetary reward was 262 kronen ($53.08). "This publication," says Jones, "was felt to be a calumny on the innocence of the nursery."
In the same year Freud published The Case of Dora, the partial analysis of a girl of 18. She had the misfortune to be in love with both her father and his mistress—according to Freud—although conventional psychiatrists of the day would have dismissed her troubles simply as the result of "depression."
For Doctors or Policemen? A psychiatrist named Walther Spielmeyer denounced the use of psychoanalysis on Dora as "mental masturbation." Jones himself reports: "I was forced to resign a neurological appointment in London for making inquiries into the sexual life of patients." By 1910 the mere mention of Freud's theories was enough to start the chairman of a Hamburg congress. Herr Professor Wilhelm Weygandt. banging his fist and shouting: "This is not a topic for discussion at a scientific meeting; it is a matter for the police."