Sabina Spielrein and the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis Image, Thought, and Language

Sabina Spielrein stands as both an important and tragic figure—misunderstood or underestimated by her fellow analysts (including Jung and Freud) and often erased in the annals of psychoanalytic history. Her story has not only been largely forgotten, but actively (though unconsciously) repressed as the figure who represented a trauma buried in the early history of psychoanalysis. Sabina Spielrein and the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis joins the growing field of scholarship on Spielrein’s distinctive and significant theoretical innovations at the foundations of psychoanalysis and serves as a new English language source of some of Spielrein’s key works. The book includes: Four chapters by Felicity Brock Kelcourse, Pamela Cooper-White, Klara Naszkowska, and Adrienne Harris spanning Spielrein’s life and exploring her works in depth, with new insights about her influence not only on Jung and Freud, but also Piaget in Geneva andVygotsky and Luria in Moscow. A timeline providing readers with important historical context including Spielrein, Freud, Jung, other theorists, and historical events in Europe (1850-1950). Twelve new translations of works by Spielrein, ten of which are the first ever translations into English from the original French, German, or Russian. Spielrein’s life and works are currently undergoing a serious and necessary critical reclamation, as the fascinating chapters in this book attest. Sabina Spielrein and the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis will be of great significance to all psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, analytical psychologists, and scholars of psychoanalysis interested in Spielrein and the early development of the field.

Introduction – The Editors Part I: Life and Works – an Overview A Comparative Timeline: Spielrein, Freud, Jung, and Other Theorists, Including Key Works and Significant Events within the History of Psychoanalysis – Cooper-White, Kelcourse & Harris Ch. 1 - From Rostov to Zürich: The Making of an Analyst - Felicity Brock Kelcourse Ch. 2 - From Zürich to Vienna: "The Power that Beautifies and Destroys" – Pamela Cooper-White Ch. 3 – Passions, Politics, and Drives: Sabina Spielrein in Soviet Russia – Klara Naszkowska Ch. 4 – "Language Is There to Bewilder Itself and Others": Theoretical and Clinical Contributions of Sabina Spielrein – Adrienne Harris Part II: Samples of Spielrein’s Writings – New Translations in English Ch. 5 – Excerpts from On the Psychological Content of a Case of Schizophrenia (dissertation) (1911)Ch. 6 – Destruction as the Cause of Becoming (1911)Ch. 7 – Maternal Love (1913)Ch. 8 – The Forgotten Name (1914) Ch. 9 – Two Menstrual Dreams (1914)Ch. 10 – Russian Literature: Report on the Progress of Psychoanalysis in the Years 1914-1919 (1921) Ch. 11 – Who is the Guilty One? (1922) Ch. 12 – Time in Subliminal Psychic Life (1923) Ch. 13 – The Three Questions (1923) Ch. 14 – Some Similarities between a Child’s Thought, Aphasic Thought, and Subconscious Thought (1923) Ch. 15 – Dr. Skalkovskiy’s Report (1929) Ch. 16 – Children’s Drawings with Eyes Open and Closed (1928/1931)

Pamela Cooper-White is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology and Religion, Union Theological Seminary, New York, and 2013-2014 Fulbright-Freud Scholar of Psychoanalysis, Vienna, Austria. She is the author of Old and Dirty Gods: Religion, Antisemitism, and the Origins of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2017). Felicity Brock Kelcourse is Associate Professor of Psychology of Religion and PastoralPsychotherapy at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. Her most recent books include (as editor and contributor) Human Development and Faith, 2nd edition (Chalice, 2015) and Transforming Wisdom: Pastoral Psychotherapy in Theological Perspective, co-edited with K. Brynolf Lyon (Cascade, 2015).