Sabina Spielrein

Sabina Naftulovna Spielrein (Russian: Сабина Нафтуловна Шпильрейн, also transliterated "Shpilrein" or "Shpilreyn", born 7 November 1885, died 12 August 1942, both in Rostov-on-Don, Russia), was a physician and one of the first female psychoanalysts. She was in succession an analysand, then student, then colleague of Carl Gustav Jung, a man with whom she also had a romantic relationship. She also met, corresponded, and had a collegial relationship with Sigmund Freud. One of her more famous analysands was the Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget. She worked as a psychoanalyst and teacher in Switzerland and Russia. Her best known and perhaps most influential published work in the field of psychology is the essay titled "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being".

Early life, education and family

Born 1885 into a family of Jewish doctors in Rostov, Russia. Her mother was a dentist, her father an entomologist, who after moving from Warsaw to Rostov became a successful merchant. One of her brothers, Isaac Spielrein, was a Soviet psychologist, a pioneer of labor psychology. Spielrein was married to Pavel Scheftel, a physician of Russian Jewish descent. They had two daughters: Renate, born 1912, and Eva, born 1924.

Before enrolling as a student of medicine in Zürich, Spielrein was admitted in August 1904 to the Burghölzli mental hospital near Zürich, where Carl Gustav Jung worked at that time, and remained there until June 1905. While there, she established a deep emotional relationship with Jung who later was her medical dissertation advisor. The historian and psychoanalyst Peter Loewenberg argues that this was a sexual relationship, in breach of professional ethics, and that it "jeopardized his position at the Burghölzli and led to his rupture with Bleuler and his departure from the University of Zurich". Spielrein graduated in 1911, defending a dissertation about a case of schizophrenia, and was later elected a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. She continued working with Jung until 1912, and later saw Sigmund Freud in Vienna.

Career

In 1923, Spielrein returned to Soviet Russia and with Vera Schmidt established a kindergarten in Moscow, nicknamed "The White Nursery" by the children (all furniture and walls having been white). The institution was committed to bringing up children as free persons as early as possible. "The White Nursery" was closed down three years later by the authorities under false accusations of sexual perversion with the children. (In fact, Stalin actually enrolled his own son, Vasily, into the "White Nursery" under a false name.)

Death

Spielrein's husband Pavel perished during Stalin's Great Terror, as did her brother Isaac. She and her two children were killed by a German SS Death Squad, Einsatzgruppe D in 1942 in Zmievskaya Balka, together with another 27,000 victims.

Legacy

While Spielrein is not often given more than a footnote in the history of the development of psychoanalysis, her conception of the sexual drive as containing both an instinct of destruction and an instinct of transformation, presented to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1912, in fact anticipates both Freud's "death drive" and Jung's views on "transformation".

Cultural Influence

Spielrein's letters, journals and copies of hospital records have been published, as has her correspondence with Jung and Freud.

A documentary, Ich heiß Sabina Spielrein (My Name is Sabina Spielrein), was made in 2002 by the Hungarian-born Swedish director Elisabeth Marton and was released in the United States in late 2005. The documentary was released in the U.S. by Facets Video, a subsidiary of Facets Multi-Media. There is a biopic The Soul Keeper (Prendimi l’Anima), directed by Roberto Faenza, with Emilia Fox as Spielrein and Iain Glen as Carl Gustav Jung. Spielrein figures prominently in two contemporary British plays: Sabina (1998) by Snoo Wilson and The Talking Cure (2003) by Christopher Hampton, in which Ralph Fiennes played Jung on the London stage. Both plays were preceded by the Off Broadway production of Sabina (1996) by Willy Holtzman. Hampton adapted his own play for a feature film called A Dangerous Method (2011), produced by Jeremy Thomas, directed by David Cronenberg, and starring Keira Knightley as Spielrein.

See also

• Victor Ovcharenko - the Russian scientist who first introduced Sabina Spielrein's biography to the public in post-Soviet time

Further reading

By Spielrein

• Spielrein, Sabina. "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being." Journal of Analytical Psychology 39 (1994): 155-186. (An English language translation of an essay originally published in German in 1912. Page one of this essay can be read online at the publisher's web site [full article available for purchase]. Available in English in a second location: Spielrein, Sabina. "Destruction as a Cause of Coming into Being". Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 18 (1995): 85-118.)
• Spielrein, Sabina. Sämtliche Schriften. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2008. (All of Spielrein's writings. In German. No English language edition.)

About Spielrein

• Carotenuto, Aldo. A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud. New York: Pantheon, 1982 (One source states a revised edition in 1983; elsewhere 1984 is given as the year of publication. Originally published in Italian: Carotenuto, Aldo, Diario di una segreta simmetria. Sabina Spielrein tra Jung e Freud. Rome, Astrolabio, 1980 [a more recent Italian edition was published in 1999]. The German edition contains some of Jung's letters to Spielrein [the English editions do not]: Carotenuto, Aldo: Tagebuch einer heimlichen Symmetrie : Sabina Spielrein zwischen Jung und Freud. Freiburg im Breisgau: Kore, 1986. According to the bibliography of William Kerr's A Most Dangerous Method [page 571], the book A Secret Symmetry "contains the extant portions of Spierein's diary during the years 1909-1912 as well as her letters to both Freud and Jung.")
• Covington, C. (2001) Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein J. Analytical Psychology, 46, 105-116
• Fusar-Poli,Paolo. Sabina Spielrein. Am J Psychiatry 2012;169:21-21
• Goldberg, A. (1984) A Secret Symmetry. Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud. Psychoanal Q., 53:135-137
• Hoffner, A. (2001) Jung's Analysis of Sabina Spielrein and his use of Freud's free association method J. Analytical Psychology, 46, 117-128
• Kerr, J. (1993) A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein.. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Launer, John. "The problem with sex." QJM: An International Journal of Medcine 100 (2007): 669-670. (Can be read online at publisher's web site. Brief summary of Spielrein's attempt to reconcile psychoanalysis with evolutionary theory and developmental psychology).
• Launer, John. Sex versus Survival. The Story of Sabina Spielrein: her life, her ideas, her genius. John Launer, 2011. (Self-published biography of Spielrein. Also available as an e-book. The introduction and part of chapter one can be read online.)
• Raphael-Leff, J. (1983) A Secret Symmetry. Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud. Int. R. Psycho-Anal., 10:241-242
• Richebächer, Sabine (2003) "In league with the devil, and yet you fear fire?" Sabina Spielrein and C. G. Jung: A suppressed scandal from the early days of psychoanalysis. Covington, C. and Wharton, B. Sabina Spielrein. Forgotten pioneer of psychoanalysis. Brunner-Routledge, Hove and New York, 227-249
• Richebächer, Sabine (2005) Sabina Spielrein. "Eine fast grausame Liebe zur Wissenschaft". Biographie 400 p. Dörlemann Zürich
• Silverman, M. (1985) A Secret Symmetry. Sabina Spielrein Between Jung And Freud. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 33(S):205-209
• Thompson, N. (1996) Freud, Jung And Sabina Spielrein: A Most Dangerous Method.. Psychoanal Q., 65:644-649
• Van Waning, A. (1992) The Works of Pioneering Psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein—'Destruction as a Cause of Coming Into Being'. Int. R. Psycho-Anal., 19:399-414

External links

• Audio Lecture about C. G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein Speilrein's impact on Jung's development (hosted at The Gnosis Archive).
• Ovcharenko, V. (1992) The Destiny of Sabina Spielrein (in Russian, archived link)