Changes

Ernest [[Jones]]'s biography of [[Freud]], titled [[Sigmund Freud]]: [[Life ]] and [[Work]], appeared between 1953 and 1957. The biography has been translated into all the major European [[languages]]. The first volume deals with Freud's [[childhood]], youth, [[complex ]] academic and personal life, and the gradual discovery of [[psychoanalysis]], including The [[interpretation ]] of [[dreams]]. The second volume deals with the years of Freud's maturity: his [[scientific ]] achievements, his personal and professional life in [[Vienna ]] during the first two decades of this century, the foundation of the international [[psychoanalytic ]] movement, his various pupils, and the so-called heretics, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav [[Jung]]. The [[third ]] volume deals with the last period of Freud's life: his later scientific achievements, his troubled personal life and [[illness]], the events that led him and his [[family ]] to emigrate from Vienna to [[London ]] to escape [[Nazi ]] [[persecution ]] in 1938, and his last months in London until his [[death]]. This volume also contains an [[overview ]] of Freud's work, its [[links ]] to various [[other ]] [[natural ]] and [[social ]] [[sciences]], and the contribution of psychoanalysis to the [[understanding ]] of [[literature ]] and art in general and [[religion ]] in [[particular]].

In spite of Jones's declarations concerning his objectivity in [[writing ]] Freud's biography, there were several mitigating factors. One must consider his declared attempt to [[defend ]] Freud and psychoanalysis from the constant attacks to which they were subjected, the [[personality ]] of Jones as a biographer of Freud, his complex and often ambivalent [[relationship ]] toward the founder of psychoanalysis, the [[cultural ]] and social context in which the biography was conceived and written, and the pressures and [[control ]] exerted on him and the use of Freud's [[material ]] by [[Anna Freud ]] and other Continental colleagues and friends in America and England. Furthermore, not all the documentation concerning Freud's life and work was available at that [[time]].

In writing the biography Jones was helped by several colleagues and friends. First among [[them ]] were Siegfried [[Bernfeld ]] and Suzanne Cassirer-Bernfeld, without whose [[help ]] many chapters of the first volume would have been [[impossible]]. Also helping were [[Marie Bonaparte]], [[James ]] Strachey, and Kurt Eissler. The biography contains numerous factual errors and has recently been criticized and attacked by many so-called independent scholars, but here one should consider Jones's advanced age and declining health. The work reflects a [[image ]] of Freud as he was known, loved, and critically appreciated by the generation of [[analysts ]] and friends who lived and worked with him.

See also: [[Anna O]]., [[case ]] of; "Autobiographical Study, An"; Freud: [[Living ]] and Dying; Freud's [[Self]]-[[Analysis]]; [[Fromm]], Erich; [[Gestapo]]; Jones, Ernest.