This article traces the evolution of Sidney Weintraub’s Post-Keynesian identity during the four decades following WW II, as seen through the eyes of his son E. Roy Weintraub. Till Düppe explore Roy’s notion that Sidney’s career can be seen as the result of defense mechanisms associated with those of aborderline personality, such as splitting and projection. As Sidney transformed from an aspiring mainstream macroeconomist into a reclusive warrior for ideas, developing a polarized view of the economics profession, his work eventually became subsumed as a branch of Post-Keynesian economics. At the same time, he nudged his son into a symbiotic dependency, standing in for his career as a mathematical economist and coauthor, while also being made complicit in his adultery. Roy’s eventual distancing from this role ultimately led to a rupture prior to Sidney’s death in 1983. It was only then that Roy was able to establish a scholarly profile as a historian of economics and gain the understanding of his father that informs this text.
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