The snares of seduction in life and in therapy, or what do young Jewish girls (Spielrein) seek in their Aryan heroes (Jung), and vice versa? – Part 2

Abstract

The author presents biographical facts of Sabina Spielrein's life after 1911, following her graduation as a medical doctor from the medical school of Zurich University, the completion of her doctoral dissertation, and the publication of her landmark paper on destruction as a forerunner of becoming. Spielrein joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and continued to publish important papers. In 1923, at the insistence of her family and urged by Freud's dreams of her success, she returned to Russia, only to see those dreams dissipate due to both the politics of the Russian psychoanalytic movement and later the repression of psychoanalysis in Russia. Stalin's terror and purges killed her brothers, and finally the German invasion killed her and her daughters. In addition, the author documents the various Spielrein myths described in Part 1 of this document and their glaring self-contradictions in the still-growing secondary Spielrein literature, in the professional press, the popular press, and the entertainment media. The data presented are not only of interest as historical, but also contain important lessons for the practice of psychoanalysis as a profession.

Keywords:

• Spielrein
• other family members
• personal history
• psychoanalysis in Russia