Ernest Jones
From Philosopedia
Jones, Ernest Alfred (1 January 1879 - 11 February 1958)
Jones, a noted psychoanalyst, introduced psychoanaysis into Britain and North America and founded not only the British Psycho-Analyical Society (1913) but also the International Journal of Psychoanalysis'', which he edited from 1920 to 1933.
From 1909 to 1912 Jones was professor of psychiatry at Toronto and director of the London Clinic for Psychoanalysis.
In addition to writing numerous works and translations, Jones wrote a psychoanalytical study of Hamlet and Oedipus and an authoritative biography, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1953-1957).
Asked in 1956 by Warren Allen Smith about his views concerning humanism, Jones responded,
- Are the following remarks of any use? (1) The exceedingly diverse senses in which the word “Humanism” is used prove conclusively that it is futile to seek for a unitary definition. The word can have no precise meaning if Christian existentialists and communistic humanists among others use it to express their particular ideals; (2) I fit myself easily into category 7, naturalistic humanism; (3) The writer who most influenced me in this direction was Thomas Henry Huxley.
A native of Wales, Jones was the only non-Continental and gentile member for many years of Sigmund Freud’s inner circle of followers. Also, Jones did not speak German. Some of his colleagues considered him an outsider and were concerned about his reputation for sexual misconduct with his patients. They also were upset by his having called Otto Rank a “swindling Jew,” resulting in Jones’s being criticized as illustrating “the arrogance and clumsiness of the British.”
Although Freud came to oppose and dislike Jones, Jones remained loyal to Freud. After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Dr. Jones was instrumental in having Freud and his family taken to London, where Freud died the next year. His three-volume The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud upon its publication in 1953 was acclaimed as the authoritative work on the subject.
Dr. Jones was an honorary associate of the British Rationalist Press Association when Bertrand Russell was its president.
