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Freud's Forgotten Pupil:
Woman Who Could Have Surpassed the Teacher
(Nonna Mirzabekova, Pravda, 3/7/2003)
Professor Obendick from Dortmund wrote in his letter to a colleague from the Rostov State University: "I once again look at pictures I took since I came to Rostov. Bright September flowers in the Theatre Square and a fountain. There is a rainbow seen in tiny countless sprays of the fountain (it has become the symbol of the city's life for me); I see small courtyards where domestic problems are mixed with romance; the boulevard in Pushkin street. Suddenly the name of Sabina Spielrein comes to my mind. Why don't they hang a memorial plaque on the house number 83 in Pushkin Street where Sabina Spielrein lived? The woman was Sigmund Freud's pupil and the founder of psychoanalysis in Russia; she fell victim to fascists in the years of Holocaust. The city of Rostov must remember her and be proud of the fact that the woman lived there!"
The name of Sabina Spielrein is rather popular in the west; there are many books and films about the woman; scientific conferences in commemoration of Sabina Spielrein are often held there. A musical was staged in Broadway on the basis of the conjecture on relations between Spielrein, Jung and Freud. However, just few facts about the woman are known in Russia. Even in the Russian city of Rostov, where Sabina was born, studied and later perished, only several people, mostly psychologists and psychotherapists, know details of her private life and scientific activity.
The woman is still a mystery, even now. Although, it seemed that she never made any secret of her life; on the contrary, she always involved in it people whom she knew, relatives, friends, doctors, teachers.
Sabina Spielrein was born in 1885. Her father, Naum Spielrein worked as entomologist in Warsaw; when the family moved to Rostov, he took up commerce. Sabina's mother Heva Spielrein (maiden name Lyublinskaya) was a dentist, but she dedicated her life to upbringing of her daughter and three sons. She had one more daughter Emilia, but she died of typhus at a very young age. The death seriously shattered Sabina's psyche. Despite this fact, she left gymnasium with a gold medal in 1904 and in summer of the same year her parents sent Sabina to the Burghelzli mental hospital in Switzerland; the diagnose was mental hysteria.
Young and unknown doctor Carl Gustav Jung was the doctor in charge of Sabina's case. Being keen on ideas of Sigmund Freud, he applied methods of the psychoanalyst from Vienna on Sabina for the first time. Jung described success of medical treatment of the young Russian girl with usage of these methods in letters to his friend and teacher. Jung didn't conceal the fact that Sabina fell in love with him (it is frequent in medical practice when female patients attribute features of a hero, father or God on their doctors). He wrote, the girl "sincerely" told she wanted to give birth to his son whom she wanted to name Siegfried. However, Jung didn't mention that the "request" of Frau Spielrein was carried out. The liaison between Sabina Spielrein and Carl Gustav Jung lasted for five years. It is believed that these relations turned out to be some kind of a catalyst that speeded up the breakup of relations between the pupil and the teacher. Freud wrote to Sabina later: "We will be happy to meet you even further if you wish to stay with us, but you must learn to discern the difference between friends and enemies (I mean Jung)."
The medical treatment went successfully. In a year Sabina felt perfectly well, and head physician of the clinic, famous psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler allowed the girl to leave for the Zurich University medical school for studies.
In 1911, Sabina wonderfully defended a thesis on the subject "On psychology of material on one schizophrenia case". The same year, she delivered a report "Destruction as the cause of formation" at one of the popular Freud's "Wednesday" sessions. It was that session when Sabina expressed the idea of a strong connection between Thanatos and Eros, the instinct of death and the instinct of generation prolongation.
At that time, Great Freud listened to the report of the young psychoanalyst indulgently and said the speech was "logically well-composed". Only in several years, he himself expressed the dual theory of attractions; at that he didn't refer to Spielrein's report delivered in 1911, that anticipated Freud's later ideas of attraction to death. In 1930, when Freud once again mentioned his former resistance to the theory of attractions, not a single word was said that criticism of that kind was given in response to Sabina Spielrein's article.
Sabina, a little energetic woman with dark curly hair would have made a wonderful career if she had stayed in Europe. As Bruno Bettelheim said, she would have been then among "the greatest pioneers of psychoanalysis".
But in 1923, on recommendation of Sigmund Freud Sabina Spielrein left Germany where she had been living for 23 years and got back to Russia. For 1.5 years she lived in Moscow, then she moved to Rostov, where she lectured at the University and worked as a doctor.
August 11, 1942. Old residents of Rostov remember perfectly well that thousands of civilians were led along the central street of Rostov. Those were Rostov Jews. The escort led them toward Zmiyevskaya Balka (the Snake Gully), to the place where they were later shot together with hundreds of captured red Army soldiers. In accordance with different sources, there are 18-27 thousand people in that common grave, and each of them was with his own fate. Sabina Spielrein with her daughters Renata, 29, a talented cellist, and Eva, 14, who, as famous musician David Oistrakh foretold, cold have become a wonderful violinist, is also together with the shot people in the common grave.
It is said that in the years of the first occupation of Rostov, in 1941 Sabina Spielrein refused to leave the native city. She said: "I know Germans, they are a civilized nation. They are not capable of evil doings." Such was her motive when she explained the decision not to leave Rostov to the second wife of her husband, pediatrician Pavel Sheftel. Before the war, the abandoned women understood perfectly well that each of them may be sent to the Soviet GULAG camps, that is why they agreed that the one who remains alive will bring up all children. (Pavel Sheftel died in 1937 of heart attack. Within the same period Sabina's three brothers: Academician Isaak Spielrein, researcher of labor psychology in the Soviet Union, Emil Spielrein, dean of the biology department in the Rostov State University, and Ian Spielrein, dean of the electrotechnical department in the Moscow Energy institute, were killed in the torture chambers of the National Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD).
Scientist Movshovich studying history of the Rostov region wrote: "By the time of the second occupation of Rostov, Spielrein very likely had already no illusions concerning the possibility of combination of the civilized German nation with their cruel doings." However, all the same she refused to save her daughters: a friend of Sabina's offered to give forged documents to the girls in accordance with which they could be passed for Armenians. It is a mystery why Sabina Spielrein several times rejected methods of salvation.
Over 25 years ago, diaries of Sabina Spielrein dated with 1908-1912, letters she received from Jung and Freud were found in the basement of the Wilson Palace in Geneva (the Psychology Institute used to be there).
The documents were published for the first time by Italian psychoanalyst Aldo Carotenuto. He understood that the discovered materials would once again confirm the liaison between Jung and his patient, his subsequent pupil, that Freud was also involved there indirectly, Carotenuto (either out of gentleman's solidarity, or because of his respect to the founder of psychoanalysis) supplied the letters with comments in accordance with which it looked so that the woman was guilty in the situation herself. He wrote: "Babe Sabina...behave so that Jung willy-nilly acted mean."
So, it was already second time that Sabina Spielrein, even after her death, fell victim to the severe struggle for affirmation of positions in the psychoanalyst hierarchy.
Several years ago a work by Peter Kuter under the title Modern Psychology was published in Germany. The scientist depicted a genealogical tree of the psychoanalytical school and mentioned Sabina Spielrein among prominent scientists as well. Scientist Ulyanitsky from Rostov was astonished to see that when the book was translated into Russian in 1997 in St.Petersburg, the genealogical tree was cut off and Sabina dropped out of it.
As we see now, Sigmund Freud, following Sabina Spielrein, believed that negotiation is just a form of affirmation. He thought that in order to admit something, you must first reject it; in order to give birth to something, you must first die. Does it mean that Sabina Spielrein is not yet dead enough that her name is not included among prominent fathers of psychoanalysis?
In conclusion we would like to add that recently, on the initiative of the president of the South Russian Humanitarian Institute V.Pigulevsky and scientist Vlad Yermak studying the life and work of Sabina Spielrein, a memorial plaque was fixed on the house number 83, Pushkin street, in the Russian city of Rostov where the scientist lived in 1887-1904.
Encountering the Other
(Kathy Mays, Ph.D, Q: A Non-Profit Publication of the C.G. Jung Society of Sarasota, December, 2003)
In this powerful award-winning documentary by Swedish filmmaker Elizabeth Márton about the life and works of Dr. Spielrein, the actual letters of Freud, Jung, Spielrein and Bleuler, as well as more recently uncovered documents, are presented from Sabina's perspective in a very sensitive and thought-provoking manner. The film has been showing to packed houses across Europe this past summer and has recently been making its way into psychoanalytic and Jewish communities in the USA.
The relationship between Spielrein and C.G. Jung began in 1904, while Jung (age 29) was working at the Burgholzli Clinic in Zurich. Sabina, a young Jewish woman of 19, was his patient. At this historically important moment in the development of psychoanalysis, Jung was also becoming involved in his relationship with Freud. Spielrein, while undergoing psychoanalytic treatment with Jung, was drawn into a personal relationship with him that lasted many years. She later went on, with his encouragement, to become a doctor and the first woman psychoanalyst.
During her treatment at the Burgholzli, Spielrein suffered from uncontrollable tidal waves of destructive Otherness rising up from within her own unconscious. As her treatment by Jung developed and her relationship with him blossomed, these threatening encounters with Other seemed to transform into gentle movements of creative and life-giving Eros, initially mirrored back to her by Jung. While this movement of Eros was being constellated both within Sabina and in her relationship with Jung, the collective situation around them reflected the opposite. Waves of hatred were rising up within the European collective unconscious, eventually sweeping over the continent and engulfing the entire period of history in a destructive storm. What impacted me most about the documentary were the creative and destructive forces evident within Spielrein's inner world, in her relationship with Jung and within the historical moment in which they lived.
Dr. Spielrein's doctoral dissertation was entitled Destruction as the Cause of Coming ino Being and was to have been published in 1912, but instead fell into obscurity, and her ideas were taken up by both Jung and Freud. There has always been a question about the extent of the relationship between Jung and Spielrein on many levels, and also about just how much of her work Jung may have adopted as his own, giving her little or no credit (see references below). After viewing this documentary, I no longer had a question. Dr. Spielrein was not only helped by Jung, but was later silenced and patronized by him, eventually disappearing both from Jung's life and from the psychoanalytic community, with all traces of her vanishing in 1937. It has since been learned that she and her daughter were shot by the Nazis in Russia. While Dr. Spielrein's life ended in obscurity when she was only 55, Jung continued to increase in stature and reputation.
Through the eyes of Dr. Spielrein, this film's historically accurate account gave me yet another insight into the lives of Jung and Freud as men and on the history of psychoanalysis. It provided another perspective on the psychological treatment of women and on the development of our current psychiatric diagnostic criteria, which still reflect this treatment. It also gave me another glimpse of the deeper currents of archetypal energies that underpin and make up all relationships with Other, whether within oneself or to the outer world, reminding me just how necessary relating to Otherness is for our development on all levels.
The emotional impact of this powerful film will stay with me. The portrayal of Sabina's strength of spirit in facing incredible Otherness -- both in her inner life and in the world in which she lived -- serves to uplift my own sometimes weary spirit, which feels the daily impact and influences of Otherness, now merely cloaked in a different historical and cultural context. I highly recommend viewing this film if one has the opportunity.
The 2002 Toronto International Film Festival
B. Ruby Rich
The history of psychoanalysis is littered with the discarded psyches of the women whose diagnoses were key to the fame of the great masters. One such woman was Sabina Spielrein. Unlike the rest, she didn't vanish forever from history. Elisabeth Márton´s film relates, restages and remembers the tragic story of Spielrein's life as gleaned from a box of her papers discovered in 1977 in the cellar of Geneva's former Institute of Psychology.
Spielrein was a young Russian-Jewish woman of 18 when she arrived in August 1904 at the Burghölzli clinic in Zurich where Carl Gustav Jung had set up shop. She was his first patient. He was 29 and married. Her cathexis was rapid and she formed an intense attachment to her young doctor, who seems to have reciprocated. But after Sigmund Freud's note (above) on the nefarious nature of females, the doctors hatched the theory of counter-transference to explain their feelings. Luckily, this wouldn't be Sabina's final contribution to psychoanalysis. Pronounced cured, she became a psychoanalyst herself and, within eight years, was practicing alongside the founding fathers.
The correspondence between Spielrein, Freud and Jung discovered that day in the Geneva basement has become essential to understanding the evolution of psychoanalysis - and the virtually insurmountable challenges facing woman who sought to contribute in any role other than that of patient.
Márton's deft re-enactments and the actors' dramatic readings of Spielrein's own words tell a chilling story, bringing to light both the work of this pioneer and the dark side of psychoanalysis. Documentary and drama carry Spielrein's life into the crosshairs of warring ideologies (Communism, National Socialism). With a rare gift for melding subjectivity with biographical facts, Márton brings Sabina Spielrein back to life, body and soul.
Best of the Fest in Palm Springs 2003
(Brad Schreiber, Entertainment Today Los Angeles)
An amazing, uniquely and poetically told doc which follows the life of Sabina Spielrein, a Russian Jew who was Carl Jung's patient, then lover and eventually associate of Jung and Sigmund Freud, inevitably creating the field of child psychology but succumbing to the politics of World War II Europe. Márton miraculously imbues the film with fluid recreations and imagery, sometimes dreamlike in their power, in telling of Spielrein's remarkable life and contributions.
MORE ACCOLADES
"Visual poetry. Mesmerizing! A fascinating narrative of madness, love, betrayal and intellectual ambition in early-20th century Europe. Márton’s unconventional approach gives the film is strange power. A cinematic palimpsest, at once mysterious and illuminating."
- Tom Beer, Time Out NY
"Brings Spielrein’s correspondence vividly to life and the result is compelling!"
- New York Magazine
"Elizabeth Márton’s documentary vividly illuminates a complex woman whose achievements were long relegated to the footnotes of history. This evocative film is a poignant testament to the twin forces of love (however blighted) and the unconscious."
- Leslie Camhi, Village Voice
"The story of Freud, Jung and Spielrein’s three-way correspondence is indispensable lore to anyone interested in psychoanalysis."
- Dana Sevens, NY Times
"Hats off to Elizabeth Márton, who has taken a bunch of dry facts and fashioned them into the gorgeous MY NAME WAS SABINA SPIELREIN! Re-enactments -- with Eva Osterberg superb as Spielrein -- bring the words to life. The scenes are shot in a dreamy black and white, accompanied by the majestic music of Richard Wagner, whose operas profoundly affected Spielrein."
- V.A. Musetto, NY Post
"(A film) as complex as its subject’s life. Márton explores the triangle connecting three immensely important individuals, offering vital insight into the work they began together."
- Elizabeth Weitzman, Daily News
"A delicate genre especially when it is dealing with history. Many people fell into the temptation of mixing dry facts with colorful romantic images. The filmmaker Elisabeth Márton, who has already proven her ability to realize well thought out films...finds from the very beginning a happy balance between sensationalism and contemplation, between emotion and knowledge. Márton and her team create an elegant and aesthetically challenging puzzle employing conventional methods like old diaries, yellowed photographs and crumpled papers. The short dramatic scenes appear like quickly hurrying shadows. They form and underline a spiritual condition and do not simply function as a dramatic device."
- Helena Lindblad, Dagens Nyheter
"Engaging"
- Andy Klein, Variety
"Extraordinary"
- David Michod, Inside Film Magazine
"With superb black-and-white images, which sometimes give the impression of being in color, the film patiently takes up Sabina's complex geographical itinerary from Zurich to Vienna to Berlin to Geneva...to Moscow and finally Rostov. Sabina, in fact, believed in the effects of the Bolchevik Revolution, but Stalin's massacres claimed her three brothers in the 1920's. In 1942, she herself met her death, along with her two sisters, victims of the Nazi massacres."
- B. Vichyn, International Association for the History of Psychoanalysis
"Excellent"
- Christian Gaillard, President, The International Association for Analytical Psychology
"A powerful, provocative depiction of a trailblazer who never received the appreciation she deserved in life"
- The 11th Annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival
"Fascinating"
- The Boston Jewish Film Festival
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WINNER FIPRESCI Prize Sochi Film Fest Russia, 2003 |
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"For the sensitive portrayal of an important but unknown figure of psychoanalysis and the intelligent and expressive use of archival material."
