Overview

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 and Vygotsky 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.

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9781138098633

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Reviews

This fascinating book fills a large gap, and provides an important corrective, showing Sabina Spielrein as an original and innovative psychoanalytic thinker in her own right, not as a minor or romantic character between Jung and Freud, nor as one who primarily borrowed from them and Piaget, for example. Cooper-White and Kelcourse, along with Harris and Naszkowska, give us Spielrein as one of the truly influential women in early psychoanalysis, despite erasure and non-citation. Accessible translations of her writings allow us to hear her own extraordinary voice. -Donna M. Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D., New York Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, New York, USA Felicity Kelcourse and Pamela Cooper-White have edited an important collection of essays on the life and psychoanalytic contributions of Sabina Spielrein. The literature on Spielrein has come a long way since Aldo Carotenuto's 1982 A secret symmetry: Sabina Spielrein between Freud and Jung. Subsequent literature has moved away from a focus on the triangular relationship between these famous figures to a critical assessment of Spielrein's original work. Kelcourse focuses on Spielrein's 1911 psychiatric dissertation, On the Psychological Content of a Case of Schizophrenia. Cooper-White analyses Spielrein's important 1912 article, Destruction as a Cause of Becoming. Two additional contributors. Klara Naszkowska and Adrienne Harris cover Spielrein's return to Russia in 1923, assessing her contributions to the development of psychoanalysis in Russia, with a specific focus on child language development. -Brian Skea, IAAP, Ph.D., Jungian psychoanalyst, private practice, Brewster, Massachusetts, USA; teaching faculty, past President and current Curriculum Coordinator, Boston Jung Institute

This fascinating book fills a large gap, and provides an important corrective, showing Sabina Spielrein as an original and innovative psychoanalytic thinker in her own right, not as a minor or romantic character between Jung and Freud, nor as one who primarily borrowed from them and Piaget, for example. Cooper-White and Kelcourse, along with Harris and Naszkowska, give us Spielrein as one of the truly influential women in early psychoanalysis, despite erasure and non-citation. Accessible translations of her writings allow us to hear her own extraordinary voice. -Donna M. Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D., New York Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, New York, USA

Author Information

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 Pastoral Psychotherapy 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).

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