Sabina Spielrein

Sabina Spielrein was born 1885 into a family of a Jewish merchant in Rostov, and died there in 1942, murdered by Nazi troops. She was one of the first female psychoanalysts. Sabine Spielrein was married to Pavel Scheftel, a physician of Russian Jewish descent. They had two daughters: Renate, born 1912, and Eva, born 1924; both were murdered with their mother in 1942. Scheftel perished in the Great Terror, in 1936. One of her brothers, Isaac Spielrein (also spelt Shpilrein or Shpilreyn) was a Soviet psychologist, a pioneer of labor psychology and perished in 1937 during Stalin's Great Terror.

A student of medicine in Zürich, Spielrein was admitted in August 1904 to 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 C. G. Jung; later Jung was her medical dissertation advisor, and his own work bore a certain influence of Spielrein's. The historian and psychoanalyst Peter Loewenberg, however, found that this was a sexual relationship, in breach of professional ethics, and that Jung was dismissed by Bleuler from the Burghölzli for this offense. Spilerein graduated in 1911, defending a dissertation about a case of schizophrenia, and was later elected member of Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. She carried on with Jung until 1912, and later saw Freud in Vienna. In 1913 there was a final breach between Freud and Jung.

In 1923, Spielrein returned to Soviet Russia and with Vera Schmidt established a kindergarten in Moscow, nicknamed "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 accusation and it was accused of practising sexual perversions on the children (in fact, Stalin actually enrolled his own son, Vasily, into the "White Nursery", under a false name Fact|date=April 2007).

Sabine Spielrein's letters, journals and copies of hospital records were revealed and published, as was her correspondence with Jung and Freud.

A documentary, "Ich hieß Sabina Spielrein" ("My Name was Sabina Spielrein"), was made in 2002 by the Hungarian-born Swedish director Elisabeth Marton and was released in the US in late 2005 (see http://www.sabinaspielrein.com/). Spielrein figures prominently in two contemporary British plays: "Sabina" (1998) by Snoo Wilson and "The Talking Cure" (2003) by Christopher Hampton. Also, there is a biopic "Prendimi l’anima" ("The Soul Keeper"), directed by Roberto Faenza, with Emilia Fox as Spielrein and Iain Glen as Carl Gustav Jung.

Literature

*Sabina Spielrein: "Sämtliche Schriften", utgiven av Erika Kittler 1987, ISBN 3-926023-03-1
*Aldo Carotenuto: "Tagebuch einer heimlichen Symmetrie : Sabina Spielrein zwischen Jung und Freud"; preface by Johannes Cremerius ; translated to German 1986, Italian original "Diario di una segreta simmetria, Sabina Spielrein tra Jung e Freud"
*Covington, C. (2001) "Comments on the Burghölzli hospital records of Sabina Spielrein" J. Analytical Psychology, 46, 105-116
*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
*Kaspit, D. (1994) "A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein.." J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 42:883-891Loewenberg, Peter (1995). The Creation of a Scientific Community: The Burghölzli, 1902-1914."Fantasy and Reality in History", pp. 46-89. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
*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

See also

* Psychoanalysis
* Sigmund Freud
* Carl Jung

External links

* [http://www.cineuropa.org/interview.aspx?lang=en&documentID=18358 Interview with Roberto Faenza]