The tragic fate of Sabina Spielrein

This course deals with renowned Russian psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein. Her works have been recently rediscovered in world psychoanalytic research circles, reclaiming justice to her crucial role in the formation of psychoanalytic thought. Her figure attracts increasing interest in the last years, although her theoretical contribution still remains in the background.

Spielrein was one of the first female psychoanalysts. She is known as both Jung and Freud’s patient and student. Spielrein’s fate and legacy were tragic. Her writings and concepts are the most appropriate place to accommodate the tragic side of human existence. Spielrein was the first to elaborate the psychoanalytic concept of the death instinct and to claim that existence, in all of its aspects, necessarily includes destruction. Her thinking influenced Freud, leading him to coin the concept of the death drive, which would dramatically redirect all further psychoanalytic thought.