Freud, Jung, Sabina Spielrein and the countertransference: David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method

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1. Earlier versions of this review were given at: the Psychoanalytic Center of California (30 November 2011) along with a commentary from Professor Robert Westman of University of California San Diego History Dept.; C.G. Jung Analytical Psychology Club meeting (8 January; 9 May; 27 May 2012); the New Center for Psychoanalysis Conference (17 March 2012) on ‘Sexual Boundary Transgressions in Psychoanalysis,’ main lecture by Glen Gabbard, with commentaries from Peter Loewenberg, James Fisher, and Elena Bezzubova.

Notes

1. Earlier versions of this review were given at: the Psychoanalytic Center of California (30 November 2011) along with a commentary from Professor Robert Westman of University of California San Diego History Dept.; C.G. Jung Analytical Psychology Club meeting (8 January; 9 May; 27 May 2012); the New Center for Psychoanalysis Conference (17 March 2012) on ‘Sexual Boundary Transgressions in Psychoanalysis,’ main lecture by Glen Gabbard, with commentaries from Peter Loewenberg, James Fisher, and Elena Bezzubova.

2. While space limitations preclude an extensive discussion of the Jungian secondary literature (Covington and Wharton, 2003) have marshaled a considerable amount of primary source and hospital data from the Burghölzli in the service of a thesis that, while Spielrein certainly evinced an erotized transference towards Jung, there is no compelling reason to think that they actually consummated this passionate relationship in the way depicted in the film. In a recent lecture, Covington (2012) has maintained that there was a self‐sacrificing, masochistic aspect to Spielrein’s love for Jung, the man she thought of as her ‘poet.’ Nonetheless, the Hampton/Cronenberg depiction of the floridly sadomasochistic liaison between Jung and Spielrein is admittedly conjectural. In the end, perhaps Spielrein may have served as an impetus to Jung’s well‐documented and uncontested sexual liaisons with other analysands, such as Antonia Wolff.

3. These points, especially about Bleuler, Jung and Freud, are elaborately and exquisitely detailed by George Makari (2008) in his histoire longue of the psychoanalytic movement.