A satisfactory purchase

For some time now, having passed up a copy in Epsom market years ago, I have coveted a copy of Ernest Jones' biography of Freud, three volumes of Ernest Jones playing St. Paul to Freud's Jesus. And not being put off by both Jones and Freud having taken a lot of stick in the last fifty years.

Including unpleasant allegations about Jones interfering with young female patients. Allegations which, as I recall, he was able to rebut in a presumably male dominated court room (in the US) by remarks along the lines of 'how could you possibly believe the allegations of a hysterical school girl about me, a serious medical man in an expensive suit'. But I also recall that the mud did stick and while he might have got off in court, there were consequences and changes.

Further prompted by the appearance of a review in the NYRB of a new biography of Freud (reference 1) by someone who, it seems, has made something of an industry of Freud bashing. Perhaps there was something unpleasant in his childhood. The reviewer observes: '... It marks the zenith of what has become Crews’s crusade “to put an end to the myth of psychoanalysis and its creator” by stripping Freud of both his empiricist credentials and the image of a “lone explorer possessing courageous perseverance, deductive brilliance, tragic insight, and healing power...'. Whereas I remain a follower, at least to the extent of believing in pitching the analysis at the Freudian sort of level, and believing that people working to understand the workings of the brain in neural and neurological terms might do well to pay him and his theories more attention. See, for example, reference 4.

So off to Abebooks, where I found lots of volumes of the Jones' biography, mostly in ones with lots of Volume 1's, some in the original Hogarth edition, some in one of the later Hogarth editions and plenty from imitators and expurgators. Prices varying wildly. But after a bit of poking around, I came across these three volumes, almost first editions and complete with dust jackets, for something under £15 plus £15 postage from Strand Books in New York, which I thought was a good deal for me. Maybe there is a lot of it sculling around New York, very big on Freud in days gone by. The three books arrived with me on the eighth day after ordering, presumably occupying some cheap space in the hold of some jumbo plying the Atlantic. Properly wrapped up in a sturdy cardboard box.

All that remains is to read it.

Reference 1: Freud: The Making of an Illusion - Frederick Crews - 2017.

Reference 2: http://www.strandbooks.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-freudians-fight-back.html.