Sabina Spielrein: out from the shadow of Jung and Freud

Abstract: Since the 1982 publication of Aldo Carotenuto's book, A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud, there has been renewed interest in the life and work of Sabina Spielrein. She was Jung's first psychoanalytic case at the Burghölzli Hospital in 1904, and was referred to several times in The Freud/Jung Letters. Spielrein recovered, enrolled in medical school, and went on to become a Freudian analyst. Her most famous paper, published in 1912, ‘Destruction as a cause of coming into being’, was referred to by Freud in 1920 in relation to his Death Instinct theory. In the few Freudian publications on this controversial theory since 1920, Spielrein's contribution is consistently omitted. Jung also neglected to refer to her ‘Destruction’ paper in his early 1912 version of ‘Symbols of transformation’, even though he had edited her paper and had promised to acknowledge her contribution. He did refer extensively to Spielrein's first paper, her medical thesis, ‘On the psychological content of a case of schizophrenia’, published in 1911, as yet unpublished in English. In her paper Spielrein sought to understand the psychotic delusions of Frau M, a patient at the Burghölzli, much in the style of Jung's ‘Psychology of dementia praecox’ (1907). The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent Spielrein's Frau M paper, and its companion ‘Destruction’ paper, make an original contribution to both Jung and Freud's emerging theories on the possible creative versus destructive outcomes of neurotic or psychotic introversion, culminating in Jung's concept of the ‘collective unconscious’ (1916) and Freud's concept of a ‘Death instinct’ (1920).     

The Activities of The Scandinavian Societies

Freud's concept of the death instinct has given rise to many different interpretations which have often been contradictory. It is in fact already possible to discern two diametrically opposite meanings of this concept in Freud's work from 1920—Beyond the Pleasure Principle—in which he first introduced the concept of the death instinct. In this paper, it is argued that both these meanings are relevant in describing psychical life, although only one of these meanings actually qualifies for the concept “death instinct”. Beyond the Pleasure Principle was written in order to try to understand some everyday, as well as clinical phenomena which could not be explained by the so-called pleasure principle. Freud postulated something beyond the pleasure principle, which initially seemed to have to do with binding energy. I will preserve this idea and attempt to develop it within the context of a phenomenological analysis of time. The temporalization of the subject involves a very basic affirmation of existence, in that the subject experiences something constant, something that can be said to possess the quality of a gestalt. I propose that that which is beyond the pleasure principle—this binding of energy—should be understood as the opposite of the idea of a primordial death instinct striving towards death. In this case, that which is beyond the pleasure principle reflects an original affirmation of existence, which could be said to correspond to Freud's first meaning of the death instinct. The second meaning—for which the name “death instinct” seems to be applicable—concerns the discharge of energy, which from a temporal point of view shows itself as a tendency to dissolution. The concept of the death instinct in its various meanings is discussed in connection with phenomenological reflections on time, which is a different approach from Freud's attempt to ground the death instinct in biology.     

Variations on the concept of traumatism: Traumatism,traumatic, trauma1

In this paper, the author outlines Freud's fundamental hypotheses concerning the concept of traumatism, then goes on to differentiate three notions (French being a particularly apposite language for such a venture): ‘traumatism’, ‘traumatic’ (in a substantive sense) and ‘trauma’. These three terms correspond to the three turning points in Freud's theory with respect to the concept of traumatism (1895‐97, 1920, 1938). The author evokes also the developments that are due to Ferenczi, particularly in his later writings (1928‐33), where he defi ned and discussed the question of ‘trauma’ in contemporary clinical practice; the author goes on to explore the different variations on this theme as regards mental functioning. He then defi nes, from a metapsychological point of view, the differences between ‘traumatisms’ that have been ‘worked over by secondary processes’, organised and governed by the pleasure‐unpleasure principle (‘traumatism’) and ‘early’ or ‘primary traumatisms’, which interfere with the process of binding the instinctual drives (‘trauma’); states of mind infl uenced by a traumatic imprint (‘traumatic’) are looked upon as belonging to both categories of the above mentioned traumatisms. The author illustrates his hypotheses with a clinical example.     

The four antinomies of the death instinct1

Matte Blanco examines four paradoxical positions that arise out of Freud's writings on the death instinct. He notes that death is not a content known to the unconscious. Furthermore, the absence of time and space in the unconscious means that the conditions necessary for any process such as instinct are similarly absent. Matte Blanco demonstrates the way in which the antinomies that he explores can be explained in terms of the logics that obtain in the unconscious, and he suggests that the concept of the death instinct is one of the most profound expressions of the relationship between the modes that underlie conscious and unconscious logic.     

Sabina Spielrein's Siegfried and other myths: facts versus fictions

Sabina Spielrein's life events became known to posterity through a private correspondence with Freud and Jung, and through her diaries. Based on a misinterpretation of the documents, a myth, a fiction, was created about an alleged sexual affair with Jung and a case of misconduct during treatment. Another myth was that her relationship with Jung was a cause of the historic break-up between Freud and Jung. The biographical facts described by the author in a number of publications show that her treatment ended when she left the hospital to become Jung's student in the medical school, a situation with its own ethical rules. Furthermore, the alleged “scandal” was no public matter: it turned out to be no more than a personal quarrel. Before, during, and after that turbulent episode, Spielrein and Jung maintained a long and tender friendship and correspondence that included sharing creative ideas that enriched psychoanalysis. In these exchanges, a special role was played by the myth of Siegfried and other themes in Wagner's operas.     

In defense of sabina spielrein

Abstract

Of all the master-disciple encounters, the most fruitful and fateful was the one between Freud and Jung, ending in a painful parting of the ways, all depicted in the Freud/Jung letters. In some quarters the Freud/Jung split is explained by the old recipe of cherchez la femme, blaming Sabina Spielrein for causing trouble between the two men. In addition, Spielrein was “diagnosed” as schizophrenic. Both the blame and the diagnosis are false. The record shows, as amply reflected in the Freud/Jung correspondence and in the letters exchanged by each of them with Spielrein (as well as Spielrein's diary), that the relations between the two men were not complicated by Spielrein. New confirmatory evidence comes from letters released by the Jung family at a later date and the recently published clinical chart of Spielrein with details about her family background, her stay at the Burgholzli Asylum, and her condition at discharge. The cumulative effect of the evidence leads to a reappraisal of the Jung/Spielrein love affair. As an aside, the Freud/Jung split had other causes. Evolving against the backdrop of the rupture with Adler, it had to do with disagreements over matters of doctrine, specifically, the sexual etiology of neuroses and psychoses, and was fought out in the arena of interpreting Schreber.     

On ‘the fear of death’ as the primary anxiety: How and why Klein differs from Freud

It is well known that Melanie Klein held the view that ‘fear of death’ is the primary source of anxiety and that her position is explicitly opposed to that of Sigmund Freud, who maintained that that fear cannot in any way or form be a source of anxiety. In a previous article on Freud's Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (Blass, 2013), the author argued that, counter to what is commonly portrayed in the literature, Freud's considerations for rejecting the fear of death as a source of anxiety were based on relational and experiential factors that are usually associated with Kleinian psychoanalysis. In light of this affinity of Freud with Klein a question arises as to the actual source of their differences in this context. The present paper offers an answer to this question. The author first presents some of her earlier findings on what led Freud to reject the fear of death as a source of anxiety and then turns to investigate Klein's considerations for accepting it. This takes us beyond her explicit statements on this matter and sheds new light on the relationship of her views regarding death and anxiety and those of Freud. In turn this deepens the understanding of the relationship of Freud and Klein's conceptualizations of the psyche and its internal object relations, pointing to both surprising common ground and foundational differences.     

Sabina Spielrein: From Being a Psychiatric Patient to Becoming an Analyst Herself

In this paper, I evaluate Sabina Spielrein’s life and ideas from a contemporary understanding. I do this by considering the context and situation in which she lived: a journey from being a hospitalized psychiatric patient to becoming a psychoanalyst herself. From her crucial life experiences she learned that the main psychic conflicts stem from the struggle between life and death, and not from opposing ego drives and sexual desires. Spielrein’s considerable creative potentials were nurtured, as well as blocked by her inner conflicts, but also by the enormous historical conflicts of her time.

     

Freud's philosophy of the uncanny

This paper is an attempt to uncover and bring to a coherent interpretation Freud's thoughts on the phenomenon of uncanniness. Starting out with the essay “The uncanny” the author wants to show that uncanniness plays an important rôle in the turn that Freud's thinking goes through at this time, and that the concept can serve as a springboard for a critical, phenomeno- logical reading of Freud's thoughts on the development of the ego. The analysis of the phenomenon of uncanniness itself tends to disrupt the coherence of Freud's earlier views and pushes him towards his later thinking. “Unheimlich” in German has the double meaning of uncanny and unhome-like, and what is not at home in itself in an uncanny sense, according to Freud, is precisely the human ego. Freud in “The uncanny” links the interpretation of uncanniness to compulsive repetition and thus makes the connection to trauma and birth anxiety discussed in later works such as “Beyond the pleasure principle” and “Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety”. The origin of our general sensitivity to the uncanny is thus, according to Freud, the loss of the mother suffered by the child as a kind of a priori traumatic experience, which is also the very event that makes the child into an ego. The understanding of traumatic neurosis and other forms of mental illness is consequently linked to an analysis of this primal uncanniness of life.     

On the reception of the concept of the death drive in Germany: expressing and resisting an ‘evil principle’?

With Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud attempted ‘to describe and to account for the facts of daily observation in our field of study’ (1920, p. 7), in particular concerning destructive clinical phenomena that confront us in the analytic situation: traumatic neuroses, melancholic states, negative‐therapeutic reactions, masochism, repetition compulsion and so on. The author demonstrates in the first section how Freud's own resistance – later self‐diagnosed – to recognizing these unwelcome facts was expressed in the terminological and conceptual ambiguities of the death drive hypothesis then introduced, ambiguities that to some extent continue to impede the reception of its clinical usefulness to this day. As soon as Freud had demonstrated the connection with clinical practice more directly in The Ego and the Id (1923), some contemporaries adopted it as a helpful clinical concept, while others believed that they could (and must) refute it. The second part outlines its reception in the 1920s and 1930s, which was part of an international discussion that was, of course, initially conducted mainly in German. The beginnings of an important further development of the death drive hypothesis are described in a separate section because it originated from Melanie Klein's earliest experiences in analysing children in Berlin in the early to mid‐1920s. She referred at that time to an ‘evil principle’, and in 1932 published her view of the death drive hypothesis, which was further developed in subsequent decades by her and her followers in London. In this period, conditions changed dramatically: in Germany Freud's books (among others) were burnt, crimes against humanity were instigated and psychoanalysis ceased to exist in this country. Almost all the analysts who published on the death drive had to emigrate. From then on, entirely different discourses took place in the various regions. In Germany, the death drive hypothesis was (largely) disregarded or rejected for decades after the Holocaust. Frank demonstrates how the uncritical recourse in relevant works to this day to an article by Brun in 1953 that considered the death drive to have been comprehensively refuted on the basis of (apparently) comprehensive literature research can be understood as a symptom. Pursuing some reflections by Beland (1988) and Cycon (1995), the author expounds her thesis that in Germany the clinical usefulness of the death drive hypothesis could not be considered as long as destructive impulses were still an immediate social reality. According to the author's observations, in stating that there had been a ‘definite reaction formation against death drive hypotheses’, Brun had unintentionally made an accurate diagnosis. It was not until the realization of inevitable perpetrator identifications (‘Hitler in us’) in this country became (more widely) possible that a concern with the death drive hypothesis could also resume. In the final section, the author takes up one line of this development and traces how some German analysts in the 1980s came into contact with Kleinian developments that had since occurred and how these found and find their way into their analytic working. She closes by asking whether it might be appropriate to consider Melanie Klein's concept of an evil principle – along with the pleasure and reality principles – as a less ambiguous one for the phenomena under consideration.     

The psychoanalyst's normal and pathological superegos

The first section of the paper explores a number of differing views regarding the concept of the superego, essentially in terms of its formation and its functions. Two broad theories of superego development, both of which were introduced by Freud, are described. The first takes the superego to be principally oedipal in origin; the second traces the superego to an earlier period. The controversy about the usefulness of the concept of the death instinct is also implicated in the different views. It is then suggested that it is worthwhile to distinguish between a normal superego and a pathological superego and that these two distinct models of the superego are implicit in the work of both Freud and Klein. Strachey's (1934) views on the nature of the mutative effect of psychoanalytic treatment are briefly reviewed in the light of this distinction. It is suggested that Strachey was hesitant in clarifying the full implications of his views, particularly regarding the reasons for the difficulty the psychoanalyst will experience in making a transference interpretation. It is argued that the difficulty will relate to the psychoanalyst's anxiety about having sufficiently worked through the countertransference, particularly in relation to superego functioning. Two brief clinical vignettes are considered in support of this view. The last section of the paper offers some comments on the emotional development of the psychoanalyst and the ways that maturing as a psychoanalyst will involve a certain mellowing of the analyst's stance and a greater tolerance of the patient's prerogative to bring the full range of his or her personality into the treatment.     

Unconscious phantasy as a structural principle and organizer of mental life: The evolution of a concept from Freud to Klein and some of her successors

Starting with Freud's discovery of unconscious phantasy as a means of accessing his patients’ internal world, the author discusses the evolution of the concept in the work of Melanie Klein and some of her successors. Whereas Freud sees phantasy as a wish fulfilling imagination, dominated by primary process functioning and kept apart from reality testing, Klein understands phantasies as a structural function and organizer of mental life. From their very beginnings they involve object relations and gradually evolve from primitive body‐near experiences to images and symbolic representations. With her concept of projective identification in particular, Klein anticipates the communicative function of unconscious phantasies. They are at the basis of processes of symbolization, but may also be put into the service of complex defensive operations. The author traces the further evolution of the concept from the contributions of S. Isaacs, the theories of thinking proposed by W.R. Bion and R. Money‐Kyrle, Hanna Segal's ideas on symbolization and reparation all the way to the latest approaches by R. Britton, J. Steiner and others, including the understanding of transference and counter‐transference as a ‘total situation’. Points of contact with Freud are to be found particularly in connection with his concept of ‘primal phantasies’. In the author's view, the idea of the transmission and communicative potential of unconscious phantasies enabled these authors to overcome the solipsistic origins of drive theory in favour of a notion in which unconscious phantasies both set down the coordinates of the inner world and form and reflect the matrix of inter‐subjective relations.     

The Question of a Jungian Community

The author describes her relationship with the reality of Parkinson's disease—how she twists and turns and pivots and falls with this rapacious intrusion, and how a new, hitherto unknown space opens between Parkinson's and herself. This new space claims its own dynamic, objective reality. In attempts to consciously access the reality of this third space, the author faces paradox, “plays” with metaphor, and tries to recognize the right “reality.” She considers Freud's reality and pleasure principles, Winnicott's iconoclastic declaration of “health being the ability to play with psychosis,” and Jung's transcendent function. She also calls on Hermes with his wings to fly through otherwise impenetrable borders. As an incantation, an evocation or a pathway, she implores Hermes to breathe in flight. In the midst of this inner work, the dragonfly literally appears, emanating transformation.     

WITHSTANDING TRAUMA: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EMMA ECKSTEIN'S CIRCUMCISION TO FREUD'S IRMA DREAM

The author considers the medical rationale for Wilhelm Fliess's operation on Emma Eckstein's nose in February 1895 and interprets the possible role that this played in Freud's dream of Irma's injection five months later. The author's main argument is that Emma likely endured female castration as a child and that she therefore experienced the surgery to her nose in 1895 as a retraumatization of her childhood trauma. The author further argues that Freud's unconscious identification with Emma, which broke through in his dream of Irma's injection with resistances and apotropaic defenses, served to accentuate his own “masculine protest”. The understanding brought to light by the present interpretation of Freud's Irma dream, when coupled with our previous knowledge of Freud, allows us to better grasp the unconscious logic and origins of psychoanalysis itself. 1     

Between a suffering body and a body in a state of need: Aulagnier’s theory of discourses on the body applied to primitive mental states

ABSTRACT

In her theory of discourses on the body, Aulagnier makes the comparison of the concept of ‘a suffering body’ and the concept of ‘a body in a state of need’. The last type is what she thinks is often found in addiction, anorexia and in borderline states, conditions marked by a radical negativity. On the other hand, ‘a suffering body’ is a concept that indicates a relation and two bodies, mother’s and child’s, that communicate. Suffering and infantile sexuality is a first attempt to accept separation by weaving a net of fantasy over the abyss of lack and separation. If pleasure and suffering are lacking as representations, the sensory reactions may exist physiologically but without psychical existence. The concepts of ‘a suffering body’ and 'a body in a state of need' will enable us to think about important structural differences between neurotic-, borderline- and psychotic conditions. As a foundation for her concepts lies a metapsychological elaborations of three kinds of processes for representation: the primal-, the primary- and the secondary process.     

Sublimity and the Ends of Reason: Questions for Deligiorgi

The sublime has come under severe criticism in recent years. Jane Forsey, for instance, has argued that all theories of the sublime “rest on a mistake” (2007, 381). In her article, “The Pleasures of Contra‐purposiveness: Kant, the Sublime, and Being Human,” Katerina Deligiorgi ( 2014 ) provides a rejoinder to Forsey. Deligiorgi argues—with the help of Kant—that a coherent theory of the sublime is possible, and she provides a sketch for such a theory. Deligiorgi makes good progress in the debate over the sublime. But here I raise two questions in relation to her account. The aim of these questions is to help clarify and augment her theory and thus extend the discussion about the tenability and relevance of the sublime. The first question is about the pleasure of the sublime. The pleasure, she claims, comes from our catching a glimpse of ourselves as agents in the world. But, I argue, Deligiorgi's conception of agency is insufficient for explaining the pleasure of sublimity, and this is because she does not take into account what I call (echoing Kant) the “ends of reason,” those ends that matter most to us as agents. The second question pertains to the phenomenology of the sublime. The worry here is that Deligiorgi overcomplicates the subject's experience and, in doing so, greatly restricts the scope of the sublime.     

War,revolution, and psychoanalysis: Freudian thought begins to grapple with social reality

Psychoanalytic theory and practice have been affected by external events as well as by internal development. Specifically, the period of the Great War and its aftermath was a turning point in the history of psychoanalysis. These experiences emphasized the inadequacy of the libido theory alone, accelerated Freud's impetus toward metapsychology, and encouraged the articulation of theories of innate destructive urges, of ego instincts, of the superego, and of social interaction. Discussionsof war neuroses, of aggression and the death instinct, of the reality principle, and of the mechanisms of social psychology undermined Freud's original biologism in favor of a social-scientific approach. Psychoanalytic theory began to take more account of social experience and was profoundly changed in the process.     

From Freud’s dream-work to Bion’s work of dreaming: The changing conception of dreaming in psychoanalytic theory

Bion moved psychoanalytic theory from Freud's theory of dream-work to a concept of dreaming in which dreaming is the central aspect of all emotional functioning. In this paper, I first review historical, theoretical, and clinical aspects of dreaming as seen by Freud and Bion. I then propose two interconnected ideas that I believe reflect Bion’s split from Freud regarding the understanding of dreaming. Bion believed that all dreams are psychological works in progress and at one point suggested that all dreams contain elements that are akin to visual hallucinations. I explore and elaborate Bion’s ideas that all dreams contain aspects of emotional experience that are too disturbing to be dreamt, and that, in analysis, the patient brings a dream with the hope of receiving the analyst’s help in completing the unconscious work that was entirely or partially too disturbing for the patient to dream on his own. Freud views dreams as mental phenomena with which to understand how the mind functions, but believes that dreams are solely the ‘guardians of sleep,’ and not, in themselves, vehicles for unconscious psychological work and growth until they are interpreted by the analyst. Bion extends Freud's ideas, but also departs from Freud and re-conceives of dreaming as synonymous with unconscious emotional thinking – a process that continues both while we are awake and while we are asleep. From another somewhat puzzling perspective, he views dreams solely as manifestations of what the dreamer is unable to think.