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

In olden days, long before the advent of public relations specialists, men and women with passionate convictions very much relied upon the loyal co-operation of devoted followers to spread their ideas throughout the land. Jesus of Nazareth depended upon his chosen Apostles, the Christian popes counted on the Crusaders, and Jeanne d'Arc sought the aid of Gilles de Rais and other members of the entourage to fight her campaigns. And Sigmund Freud, in spite of his abundant talents, desperately courted a band of brave pioneers such as Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, Sandor Ferenczi, Ernest Jones, Otto Rank, and Hanns Sachs, to edit the psycho-analytical journals, co-ordinate the international conferences, develop Freudian theory, and protect Sigmund Freud from the calumnious remarks of the organic psychiatrists. Freud honoured these intelligent and capable men by presenting them each with a Greek intaglio from his extraordinary collection of antiquities, which the disciples then mounted in gold rings, thus signifying their membership in Freud's special committee, sworn to defend psycho-analysis from an anti-semitic and philistinish world.

Professor Phyllis Grosskurth, the distinguished biographer and historian, renowned for her superb books on the life and work of Havelock Ellis and Melanie Klein, has plundered the archives of the Library of Congress, the Sigmund Freud Copyrights, the British Psycho-Analytical Society, and other repositories, to tell the story of Freud and his closest followers in revealing detail. And only a writer with the consummate skill of Grosskurth could have done justice to this fascinating tale of the complex interactions between Papa Freud and his angenommene Kinder, the "adopted" children who expressed more interest in psycho-analysis than any of Freud's biological sons. Professor Grosskurth has researched this story so carefully that she has even treated us to breathtaking literary depictions of the Hotel d'Angleterre in Hildesheim where Freud and his colleagues met: "Laurel trees flanked its facade, the entryway was covered in red c-arpet,-and the headwaiter, with a napkin on his arm, stood at the door of the dining room." (p. 20).

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'être 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