In ‘The Dark Regions of the Mind’ A Reading for the Indecent Assault in Ernest Jones's 1908 Dismissal from the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases

Abstract

Following a medical examination, in late March 1908, Rebecca Levi, a young in-patient in the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases, made a serious allegation against Jones. Having discussed the matter, behind closed doors, the hospital Committee called upon Jones to resign. Many years later Jones wrote up his account of the 1908 Affair, which his biographers and historians of psychoanalysis have accepted more or less without question. Such uncritical readings raise questions as to how the psychoanalytic community chooses to engage with the allegations of indecent (child) assault levelled against Jones. Reading the contemporaneous documents, including Ian Malcolm's letters to Jones, Dr Savill's account of Rebecca Levi together with various other texts, reveals serious discrepancies in Jones's narrative, thereby suggesting a far more disturbing scenario than Jones ever allowed. The paper concludes by examining the distinctions to be drawn around Jones's sexual relationships with his adult patients as opposed to his treatment of prepubescent girls.