Andrew Nagorski draws an essential portrait of the group of half a dozen people who helped the Jewish doctor flee to London after the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich. The group of saviors is led by the Welsh psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, who obtained entry visas to the United Kingdom for the Freuds.
Anna, the great man's little daughter; Marie Bonaparte, Napoleon's great-niece and billionaire aristocrat; the American diplomat William Bullitt; Freud's family doctor, Max Schur, and Nazi official Anton Sauerwald. The book tries not to fall into hagiography and shows us a flesh-and-blood Freud not exempt from manias and contradictions. Although psychoanalysis triumphed in the U.S., its creator did not stop hating that country. Although Freud sympathized with the victims, he wrote: “The unfounded fanaticism of our people is, in part, responsible for the awakening of Arab distrust” and he considered the invention of money “a great cultural advance”