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After studying this book, one may seriously question Ernest Jones's statement that ‘Abraham was certainly the most normal member’ of the Committee, distinguished by ‘steadfastness, common sense, shrewdness and a perfect self-control’ (Jones, 1955, p. 159). He even described Abraham as ‘divinely normal’ (p. xvi, quoting Roazen). Here, however, we read repeatedly about Abraham's ‘depression’ (e.g. pp. 89-90, 166), about his ‘inhibitions’ (p. 87), his ‘periods of extreme depersonalisation, in which he lost all emotional contact with himself and those around him’ (p. 90), and also that, despite his alleged ‘rare gift of empathy’ (p. 137), ‘he might suddenly fail to empathise at all, without even realising it’ (p. xxiii): ‘There are … articles in which Abraham writes about his patients as if they are things with which he has no emotional contact. This total lack of empathy had an effect almost as if he affixed them firmly to their problems, for which he blamed them’ (p. 90, my emphasis). He ‘could not feel anxiety in others’ and ‘none in himself, either’ (p. 7), he ‘failed to notice when another person was extremely angry’ (p. 72), ‘he sometimes seemed to be completely unaware of fear in other people’ (p. 98), and indeed ‘fear was a blind spot for Abraham’ (p. 171). (Although he suffered from ‘agoraphobia’ in his childhood, p. 131.) Although he was so often praised for his even temper, ‘he had sudden outbursts of rage’ (p. 6). In addition, he ‘occasionally fainted and … had a congenital eye disorder’, eventually becoming ‘blind in his right eye’ (p. 6). Jones did mention that Abraham