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Even though little in Freud's theory prepares us for the role of national differences in the reception of psychoanalysis, one way of approaching the significance of Freud in the twentieth century would be through a country by country approach. In his case history of the Wolf Man Freud did in passing refer to Russian national character, and more than once Freud singled out America as a place where only superficialities could be expected, but on the whole his approach implied the universality of the unconscious processes he had been fortunate enough to uncover. Modern anthropology came too late to get absorbed into Freud's thinking, and he stuck to a belief in the existence of ‘primitive’ (rather than preliterate) cultures. As a leader Freud did have a keen eye out for how to promote his ‘cause’ in different national contexts, but he tended to take this side of his organizational efforts more or less for granted.
When it came to Britain Freud had a largely favourable impression. His two older half-brothers had been able to find sanctuary there, and Freud's middle son's first name was chosen to honour Cromwell's part in the history of parliamentarianism and the emancipation of Jewry. It is true that at the outset of the First World War Freud felt drawn to the side of the Central Powers, and therefore became critical of British policies, but he so admired British writers and thinkers that he had no difficulty in finally deciding to emigrate there in 1938.
Nevertheless the ideas of Melanie Klein were far more distasteful to Freud than psychoanalysts in Britain have been ready easily to acknowledge. Ernest Jones was, like so many others who picked up psychoanalysis in its early days, an outsider, if only because originally from Wales. By the early 1920s the British Psycho-Analytical Society was far behind what Berlin, Vienna and Budapest had been able to accomplish. Entirely aside from Jones's interest in getting Klein to London in order to help with his own family, he want