“One of the outstanding biographies of the age... It gives us an unmatched — and unretouched — portrait of Freud as a human being.” — The New York Times
“The definitive life of Freud and one of the great biographies of our time... Charged with intellectual excitement, it is a chronicle of heroic struggle and adventurous discovery.” — The Atlantic
“A landmark of literature, a remarkable appreciation of one of the remarkable spirits of the modern age.” — Scientific American
“Superb drama... Dr. Jones has managed to illuminate some obscure corners of Freud’s first years with a thoroughness that would have astonished, and might well have dismayed, the reticent and august Freud.” — The New Yorker
“A masterpiece of contemporary biography... The letters are also a fascinating guide to the man. From them emerges suddenly a tough, jealous, ferocious figure.” — Time
When he died in 1958 at the age of 79, Ernest Jones was one of the leading practitioners of psychoanalysis and one of its foremost champions. Born in Wales, Jones became the sole “foreigner” in the original circle of Freud’s co-workers in the early years of the 20th century and the first native English-speaking psychoanalyst. Until Freud’s death in 1939, he remained one of his closest friends and trusted associates. When the Freud family authorized abiography, they turned to Ernest Jones and he devoted almost the entire final decade of his life to the project. He himself once observed, if he should achieve immortality, it would be not as a pioneer in the science to which he had devoted his life, but as the biographer of Sigmund Freud.