You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Although the author tells us in his preface that the title was influenced by the problem-setting games (Denksportaufgaben, p. 7) his father used to play with his family, he also admits to certain overtones of Berne's title: Games People Play (Spiele der Ewachsenen). At any rate, Blomeyer pére seems to have launched his son on a career which made him unable to leave a puzzle unsolved.
‘What a detective you would have made!’ These were the words with which, according to a British ophthalmologist, he was addressed by Ernest Jones after he had presented a paper on the psychology of styes. The words came to my mind when I was reading the present book.
More than fifty per cent of the text is dedicated to a reinterpretation of Freud's work on Signorelli's picture, read in the context of Freud's history and personality; most particularly, in relation to his probable affair with Minna Bernays during the years 1896-9. The array of circumstantial evidence put before the reader is indeed formidable. The thoroughness with which the author has pieced together all available data is impressive. He makes us, the jury, come to the conclusion that Freud covered up his tracks in his characteristic trickster-like fashion by presenting a nearly true story and thereby deliberately confusing most readers, but not ‘private eyes’ of Blomeyer's calibre. The evidence, though circumstantial, seems overwhelming. The tenacity with which Blomeyer has put all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together, gathered as they are from a large variety of sources, makes him a Sherlock Holmes among analytical psychologists. His painstaking researches must have covered years. The author justifies his enterprise by the resultant new look one gets of one of the greatest pioneers of our time. His belief is that our heroes can become more human and therefore more closely resembling us ordinary mortals. The inevitable ambivalence to father-figures, the mixture of hero-worship and hostility is rendered tolerable both w