Michael Pye reviews Freud’s Wizard: The Enigma of Ernest Jones by Brenda Maddox with special attention to the avoidance Maddox and Jones played to court case against him as to inappropriate behavior, Freudian or not . . .

Fanny Harrigan was 12, at a school for “retarded” children, when she left her laundry work for a speech test with Dr Jones; and she said he did indecent things. Dorothy Freeman made the same accusation and on the same day; she said if she’d done what Jones asked, “her mother would beat her and put her to bed”. Elizabeth Overton said the same, and Walter Johnson didn’t like the questions the doctor asked. Four children in one day, all poor, all vulnerable, the kind nobody has to believe; and all saying that Dr Jones had done bad things. The school authorities assumed the girls had made it all up, but Dorothy’s father went to the police, and Dr Jones went to court. The police surgeon gave evidence of stains “of such a character that they should not have been there”. The magistrate insisted the girls were mentally defective, and when told that romancing and making things up was not unknown, even in courts of justice, he said: “Particularly in women.” The case dissolved, amid raucous laughter.

Jones is the driving force behind “rescuing” Freud from loss to the Nazis but his own autobiography skips over large segments, albeit admitting a self-doubt and self-recrimination regarding certain impulses. The guy was more than a bit of a lothario with more than a whole lot of affairs and goings on but these admitted affairs were with adults with full faculties.

The review makes one wish to pick up the book and give it a careful read.