STEVEN MARCUS
531
a source of lasting pleasure.
It
nonetheless remains true that after a
certain point in his life Freud's fundamental relation with the world
was that of a transference. The primary role which he envisaged for
himself was that of a father, or of some variation upon paternity. He
was a pater familias at home; he regarded his followers as sons and
grandsons, heirs and assignees. Those who broke away, in whom the
transference became negative, were regarded as either disloyal sons or
sons who could not fulfill (or put up with) their sonship. And the
psychoanalytic movement itself was of course his essential child, his
special crea tion.
It
should therefore come as a surprise
to
no one that Ernest Jones 's
three volume biography,
The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud,
should contain within it considerable evidence of transference.
It
was
in the first place an official biography. And Jones himself was one of
Freud 's early and most loyal disciples and lieutenants. Despite its
immense length, it had to be selective. Its monumental wake left
behind a mass of detritus and debris. Moreover, in the interval since it
was written new material has come
to
light. There is every reason then
for a book like Paul Roazen 's
Freud and his Followers
to
be published.
Roazen 's method has been to poke around in what was left behind and
left out. He interviewed more than one hundred people who either
knew Freud personally or who had some connection with or interest in
the history , particularly the early history, of the psychoanalytic move–
ment. He a lso gained access to Ernest jones's papers, an archive of
informa tion in themselves. Some of the material that he has found-to
which I shall turn in a moment-is of a certain pertinence.
In add ition to this, however, anyone who is interested in Freud can
not have felt comfortable with the manner in which those who have
control over the biographical material leh behind by Freud have been
discharging some of their responsibil.ities. Until recently, the volumes
of Freud's corres pondence that have been published have been edited in
a style that has to be described, to put it mildly, as defensive. When one
has taken all questions of tact and discretion into account, there is still
no way to support or condone the editorial practices tha t have been
pursued in the various volumes of Freud's correspondence that have
been published during the las t twenty odd years. Freud's letters have
been bowdl erised; incomplete sets of correspondence have been put
out; letters have been cut without marks of omission; sometimes when
an ommission has been noted, it is utterly impossible to know what
principle of deletion has been followed; and sometimes (as in the
important Freud-Abraham correspondence) it is impossible to make
out whether any principle has been followed at all. This kind of
