ABSTRACT
This chapter follows the turbulent trajectory of Joan’s psychoanalysis with Ernest Jones. Jones seemed a rational choice, as he was Freud’s representative in England. However, Joan did not know that while he was working as a medical officer for a special school he was accused of sexually abusing children in his care. He took flight to Canada with his mistress and when he returned he had reinvented himself as a psychoanalyst. He had not left behind his problems with boundaries, and twice lent Joan his holiday house. Not surprisingly Joan developed an erotised transference. Astonishingly, Jones admired Riviere’s superior intelligence and knowledge of psychoanalytic theory, and by 1919 she became one of the founder members of the British Psychoanalytic Society. She also began translating Freud’s work. Joan still wrote to Ernest Jones complaining of how ill she felt. By now it was clear that she had a negative reaction to success.
