Freud's Wizard

A portrait of the brilliant and flawed analyst who was Sigmund Freud's colleague, impresario, biographer—and who rescued him from the Nazis.

The saturation of the English-speaking world with psychoanalytic concepts was due largely to one brilliant analyst, Ernest Jones. As Freud's disciple, he led the international psychoanalytic movement, shifting its vortex from Vienna to London and spreading its influence to Toronto, New York, and Boston.

While negotiating the ferocious politics of the movement, Jones also managed an imposing series of liaisons, including an heiress and her maid, analysands, and a “Druid Bride.” Unlike Freud, he never had to wonder, “What do women want?”

From Jones's first encounter with Freud's writings as a medical student to the eve of World War II, when he orchestrated his master's escape to London a hairsbreadth away from the death camps, award-winning biographer Brenda Maddox lays bare a dark and creative era, and the life of a heretofore unrecognized architect of the twentieth century's view of psychoanalysis.

“Engrossing biography . . . also a fascinating account of the intrigue within Freud's entourage. Almost a secret society, its members seduced, feuded, and maneuvered, all the while psychoanalyzing one another and sharing the details.” —Portland Oregonian

“Of interest intrinsically and as part of the history of one of the twentieth century's most influential ideologies . . . readable and valuable.” —Washington Post