This essay is a review of Ernest Jones 'What is Psychoanalysis?' (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973/77).

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BOOK REVIEW
Ernest Jones (1948). What is Psychoanalysis? (Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1973,
1977), pp. 126, ISBN 0-8371-6670-5
INTRODUCTION
Ernest Jones did more than any other analyst to consolidate the gains of
psychoanalysis in Britain. Not only did he help to institutionalize it as a practice at
the British Institute of Psychoanalysis, he also wrote the most important biography
of Sigmund Freud of his generation.
This book is an important effort on his part to explain the theory and practice of
psychoanalysis to the educated layperson. It sets out not only the basic precepts of
psychoanalytic theory, but also explains the scope of psychoanalysis in a way that
should still be of interest in a number of areas outside the clinic.
In this book, Jones like many other analysts of his generation feels a sense of moral
obligation to explain the assumptions, insights, and gains of psychoanalysis (given
that much of psychoanalysis is counter-intuitive to the layperson’s world view or
gut feelings about human nature).
Jones therefore finds it necessary to identify the forms of subjectivity in use in
everyday life in order to revisit those assumptions in the light of the psychoanalytic
model of the unconscious.
Though this book was originally published in 1948, it is still worth reading by the
layperson who is looking for a point of entry into psychoanalysis and its applications
across a number of professional domains. The book begins with a broad introduction
in which Jones not only defines what psychoanalysis is, but also briefly explains how

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it came to be a world-wide movement after a humble start with a few hysterical
patients in Vienna. After that Jones moves on to meta-psychology or the theory of
psychoanalysis.
The importance of this section is related to the fact that the most important
discoveries of psychoanalysis cannot be explained without seeking recourse to meta-
psychological constructs like the unconscious, repression, psychic conflict, the
theories of sexuality, the dream-work, and the ‘formations of the unconscious.’
While some of these technical terms pre-existed psychoanalysis, the meaning
attributed by Sigmund Freud and his successors to these terms was substantially
different from what pre-existed in the psychological literature.
This is one of the reasons that Jones and his contemporaries – including Sigmund
Freud himself – found themselves writing any number of expository introductions
on the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.
THEORIES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
The common invocation of terms like the ‘unconscious’ across a number of theories
makes it more and not less difficult to understand what is really at stake in the
psychoanalytic model of the mind.
Every analyst therefore finds it necessary to do what he can by way of conceptual
clarification not only for those of their own patients, but for those who sought
treatment at the British Institute of Psychoanalysis at London and elsewhere.
So what started as an attempt to get the technical terms right across a range of
conflicting vocabularies later became a genre of writing that psychoanalysis made its
own.
These introductions are theoretically interesting because what they demand is that
the reader should think-through the most significant events of his life from the point
of view of the psychoanalytic model of the unconscious. This will give the reader
good reason to believe that he gets through even the most important and traumatic

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events of his life without being willing to reflect adequately on what really
happened and why it affected him the way it did.
That is why psychoanalysts argue that the unconscious is a kind of ‘overseeing,’
something whose manifestations we prefer not to notice in our everyday life. In
some cases that are characterized by severe forms of repressions, the subject of the
unconscious finds himself seized by a passion for ignorance.
In this sense, the unconscious is not merely something that we do not know enough
about; it is rather something about which we simply cannot find out enough; it is not
just in the locus of the ‘unknown’ but in the locus of the ‘unknowable.’
There is however a theoretical difference between locating the unconscious in the
locus of the unknowable and making sense of it to the extent that it is possible to do
so.
Books like this are an attempt to make the best of a difficult situation and not mystify
the unconscious beyond reasonable limits. So even when he grapples with the
theoretical difficulties in formulating a model of the unconscious, Jones is always
practical in his approach because of his training as a clinician in the British tradition
of empiricism.
That is why he is anxious to argue that the insights of psychoanalysis are not only
therapeutic for patients on the couch, but applicable in a range of professional
domains. The most important of these are the professions in which we grapple with
human nature and prepare the next generation to take over when it is time for them
to do so.
CONTEXTS OF APPLICATION
The professions of interest from a psychoanalytic perspective include medicine,
education, anthropology, sociology, politics, criminology, law, art, literature,
mythology, and religion. Needless to say, experts have made use of psychoanalytic
insights in formulating and deconstructing the conceptual structure of these areas.

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But it is not only Freudian psychoanalysis that has percolated into these areas, but
those of a number of competing schools as well.
What all these approaches have in common however are theories of subjectivity. All
these areas are preoccupied with a formal representation of the basic assumptions
that they make about human nature when they seek to explain the relationship
between cause and effect in the human and social sciences.
So it is important for Jones to differentiate at the very outset the analytic differences
between taking a psychoanalytic approach to doing business as usual. Taking a
psychoanalytic approach basically means asking how the foundations of an area will
have to be re-thought if we decide to take meta-psychology seriously.
Jones’s analysis of the usefulness of psychoanalytic theories in the areas enumerated
above will speak for themselves. Those attempting to read about psychoanalysis for
the first time should start with the applications that are most relevant in their own
areas of expertise before grappling with a general theory of psychoanalysis.
In other words, they should read the chapters on the applications of psychoanalysis
to their own areas as though they were ‘special’ theories, before putting it all
together in the context of the human or social sciences as a general theory of the
mind.
That is the best reading strategy that I can recommend in order to reduce their own
levels of resistance and apply the insights of psychoanalysis to make sense of their
everyday life.
Those who find the effort worth their while should then turn to Sigmund Freud’s
introductory and expository texts on psychoanalysis that are listed in the
bibliography of this book. There is however no better way to get started on
psychoanalysis than to read this lucid introduction.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN