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Ernest Jones was probably the greatest political operative in all of psychoanalytic history. When one considers that Jones escaped scandal on two continents because of presumed sexual misconduct, his many successes for the cause (die Sache) of psychoanalysis are extraordinary and reflect enormous energy and dedication. Jones founded the American Psychoanalytic Association, the British Psychoanalytical Society, the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, and helped found the International Psycho-Analytical Association, of which he was president for many years. He championed Melanie Klein's ideas in England and helped many fleeing Nazi oppression. Jones became Freud's sanitizing, gate-keeping biographer/hagiographer and supervised the translation of Freud's work.
The letters of Freud and Jones, which cover the most creative period of psychoanalytic history, reveal Jones as Freud's instrument and willing accomplice, but someone who exploited Freud as well. Freud and Jones were never really “pals” in the way that Silberstein, Fleiss, and Ferenczi were. Jones' non-Jewishness as well as character flaws were always a cause for distrust on Freud's part.
Freud has been warned off Jones by Jung at about the time of their meeting. In a letter to Freud on July 12, 1908 Jung wrote:
Jones is an enigma to me. He is so incomprehensible that it's quite uncanny. Is there more in him than meets the eye, or nothing at all? At any rate he is far from simple; an intellectual liar (no moral judgment intended!) hammered by the vicissitudes of fate and circumstance into many facets. But the result? Too much adulation on one side, too much opportunism on the other?”
Freud wrote back to Jung:
I saw him [Jones] as a fanatic who smiles at my faintheartedness and is affectionately indulgent with you over your vacillations. How true this picture is, I don't know. But I tend to think that he lies to the others, not to us.
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