Book Review: The Secret Ring: Freud's Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis

This highly recommended book, cunningly titled The Secret Ring: Freud's Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis, offers a splendid insight into the working lives of the early psycho-analysis, replete with important object lessons for contemporary Psychotherapeutic societies. Within only a few years of joining the "cause", the committee members began to grumble vociferously about the burdens of paperwork, letter-writing, and other mundane tasks which often threatened to eclipse any creative writing, research, or teaching. The colleagues communicated in a series of Rundbriefe, or round-robin letters; yet as Grosskurth has noted :"Scientific issues were seldom raised in the circular letters, although Freud had given this as an important raison d'etre for the letters." (p. 99).

As the administrative chores began to mount, Freud and his cohorts found themselves confronting some profound, existential anxieties about the veritable meaning of it all; and by 1928, even Ernest Jones, who thrived on obsessional organisational tasks, lamented to Freud that, "The politics and personalities of [psychoanalytic] work have brought more pain than pleasure in the last years, and what else is there?" (Quoted in Grosskurth, p. 195.) This sad comment might cause us to reflect whether, in fact, our societies and committees really offer us satisfaction and pride, or whether they actually hide some deeper and more destructive anxieties. Perhaps Grosskurth's narrative will compel us to question the meaning and value of our current institutional structures, and thereby benefit from the insights of our forebears, so that our own secret rings can liberate us, instead of cutting into the skin, as tight rings always do.

Brett Kahr