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I attempt to rehabilitate Edward Glover's historical reputation, based on unpublished interviews as well as recently found documentary material. This should make one of the defining moments in the history of British psychoanalysis more plausible. Glover was an eloquent heresy-hunter — against Jung, Rank, Klein, Alexander, and others—yet the polemical side of him represents only one aspect of his career. During the Controversial Discussions Glover was taking some of the burden for the way his leader Jones had run the British Society. In moving against Klein, Glover felt he was fulfilling Freud's own wishes, and that he was allied with the recently arrived Viennese contingent.
After Glover's resignation in 1944, Jones split the opposition by appointing Anna Freud as Glover's successor as IPA Secretary. Subsequently Adrian Stephen and Donald Winnicott opposed Glover's even being allowed to speak at a psychoanalytic conference in Amsterdam; Anna Freud defended Glover's presence then. Glover's long struggle to be accepted as a member of the Swiss Society only went through in 1949, when Jones ceased being President of the IPA. Glover and Anna Freud regularly corresponded about setting up of the distinction between the “B” and “A” groups within the British Society. Meanwhile Glover, who had since the early 1930s been the de facto founder of the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency, used his administrative talents there. He successfully founded The British Journal of Delinquency with Miller and Mannheim. Unlike what happened at the British Society, Glover cooperated without problem at the ISTD and the Portman Clinic.
Glover was not only an important and successful clinical analyst but also a pioneer in forensic psychiatry. In 1947 he was unofficially approached and asked to take over the Directorship of the New York Psychoanalytic Training Institute. When the proceedings of the Controversial Discussions were published in 1991, various myths had been established about what had happened. That Glover found himself caught in the middle was not only a personal tragedy but also a part of a much larger story.