ABSTRACT
ON my return to London, late in 1913, I was fully aware of the hopelessness of pursuing any further academic career there—even if there were no other reason, my association with psycho-analysis would alone settle that matter—and I signalised my acceptance of the fact by deciding to live and practise in a flat in Great Portland Street, outside the hallowed medical quarter; in those days no consultant could practise east of Portland Place or west of Welbeck Street. I was to be, if not an outsider, certainly a very irregular person. It was manifest that I was “obsessed with sex”, if not worse, and in those days the conception of sex simply did not exist in scientific circles, as Havelock Ellis had long ago found out to his cost. My former friends received me with politeness, but without intimacy. Harry Campbell told me roundly I should be ostracised if I stayed in London. The sharpness of the remark somewhat shocked me, but I am prone to giving people the benefit of the doubt and I took it that he was giving me a friendly warning to prepare me for possible affronts. It was not very long, however, before I received indubitable evidence that he was spreading disreputable stories about me which he must have known to be untrue. I had liked him and been an intimate friend of his, but now I was bound to conclude that the harsh epithet Victor Horsley had applied to him years before was not quite so misplaced as I had supposed. But I was beginning to learn that proximity to sexual ideas has the power of evoking the worst in man as well as the best.
