The publication of the official biography of Freud's biographer awakens the hope that it will shed light on the personal myth about Ernest Jones that forms the subtitle of the book: Freud's Alter Ego. Indeed Jones's historical writings reflect the divided aims that were so apparent in the course of his professional life. When he set out, according to his son, to write his own biography, he realized that he could not do that until he had completed what he viewed as his primary, natural task of being Freud's biographer. Then, after he had carried this out magnificently, he found himself so depleted by the rigors of the Second World War, enforced retirement, physical decline, and the stress of controversial issues that even his prodigious ambition, energy, and devotion to the cause of psychoanalysis were insufficient to enable him to complete his own life