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The author, Ronald W. Clark, born and living in England, is well known for his biographies of great men—Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and others—of the twentieth century. His books have been popular and successful.
Since Jones wrote his official biography, Clark states, a great deal of new material about Freud's life has been published. In this new biography of Freud, Clark has drawn upon a wealth of Freud's letters that have become available. Particularly rewarding is Clark's consideration of Freud's youthful letters to his young friends, Fluss and Silberstein. These letters show Freud as an adolescent in a state of passionate and enthusiastic creativity. This period in Freud's life appears quite typical for gifted young boys of that era. Freud does not look very different from his friends who in later life went on to very ordinary achievements.
A strange story, based on Renée Gicklhorn's research, concerns the report of a second wife of Freud's father, Jacob, registered by the Catholic authorities as Rebecca Freud. Another document is quoted to the effect that she came to Freiberg with his two sons. There is no other evidence of Rebecca, so that the story is very hard to believe. Clark hesitates to come to a definite conclusion, however, since it is also hard to believe that bureaucrats would invent a wife. Clark points out that if there had been another stepmother for the two sons before Sigmund Freud's mother became Jacob Freud's wife, the family experience in Freud's childhood would have been even more complex and confusing than our evidence heretofore has indicated.
Another interesting item concerns Freud's Uncle Joseph. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud mentioned that this uncle had gotten into trouble with the law and that his father was so shaken by the experience that his hair turned grey within a few days. The story led to many speculations, but Jones concluded that the event could not have been of much importance, since there was no mention