Ernest Jones

The death of Ernest Jones has prime significance for the whole of the psycho-analytic world. For the British Psycho-Analytical Society this significance is naturally intensified, since Jones created the Society and for many years dominated it by his personality and devotion. For some individual members, especially those whose analytic roots reach down to the decade following the First World War, Jones' death means a great personal loss.

Jones was born in South Wales. He was educated at Swansea Grammar School and at University College, Cardiff, and it was at University College Hospital, London, that he received his medical training. From the early stages of Jones' professional life there were unmistakable signs of his exceptional ability. He had one of the finest of intellects, and at the same time a fierce drive to work hard and to concentrate on the job in hand. His interests at this early stage included clinical medicine, surgery, neurology, pathology, and also clinical psychiatry, although the latter as we know it now was then almost non-existent. Undoubtedly the friendship of Wilfred Trotter was important to him at this stage. Trotter and Jones were associated in their 'discovery' of Freud. Here was a colleague destined to be in the front rank of surgery who contributed positively in later years to the theory of group behaviour and cohesion. Such a friendship was indeed valuable during the stage described in his autobiography1 when Jones was starting painfully to learn that physicians, surgeons, and psychiatrists did not want their terrain invaded by the discipline of a new science.

In 1910 Trotter married Jones' sister. The development and evolution of this friendship is well described in the autobiography.

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