Jones, Ernest (1879-1958)

Welsh psychoanalyst of the Freudian school. Jones was a major figure in the establishment of psychoanalysis in Britain, and founded the British Analytical Society and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. He wrote a famous essay analysing Shakespeare's character Hamlet in terms of the Oedipus complex.

Jones was born in Glamorgan, Wales, and was educated at Cardiff and London. He soon began to specialize in neurology and psychiatry. He was professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Canada, 1909-11. He became the most respected psychoanalyst in the English-speaking world, and in 1920 founded the International Journal of Psycho-analysis, which he edited until 1939. Among his many writings is the three-volume biography Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, 1953-56.