Sabina Spielrein was a Russian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst whose life is both interesting and tragic.

From a tough childhood to an even worse adulthood, this researcher was one of the first women to study a university career, to devote herself to psychiatry and to be a pioneer in the field of pedagogical sciences. In this article we will deal with her history through a summarized biography of Sabina Spielrein .

Biography of Sabina Spielrein

Let’s look at Spielrein’s life journey, which is notable for its intellectual brilliance and, at the same time, for the harshness of his family relationships and, also, with one of his lovers.

First years

Sabina Naftulovna Spielrein was born on November 7, 1885 in Rostov, Russia, into a traditional, upper-class Jewish family.

Although the norm in the city of Rostov was for wealthy families to take their children to French schools, Sabina’s parents chose to have her attend a more alternative and innovative elementary school. In that school the pedagogical approach was enlightened and liberal , and stood out in comparison with traditional Russian-French education in which the elites indoctrinated their children.

Even as a child Sabina Spielrein was an avid learner, having extensive knowledge of music as well as speaking up to four languages: English, French, German and Yiddish, a language that would later help her to become fluent in Biblical Hebrew. But in spite of being intellectually very restless and having a very high school performance, she was also a naughty girl, who used to be punished.

At the age of eleven she was admitted to the Yekaterinskaya Gymnasium, a high school .

Psychiatric internment and contact with psychoanalysis

Sabina Spielrein’s childhood and adolescence were marked by rather raw relationships with her parents. Her father subjected her to great pressure to get good grades , in addition to forcing her to practice piano, violin and singing.

Probably it is all this family pressure that made the young Sabina end up emotionally overwhelmed, making her, at the age of 18, need to be admitted to a psychiatric clinic, far away from her native Russia, in Switzerland . She was treated at the Burghölzli Psychiatric Hospital, which belongs to the University of Zurich. She remained there from August 17, 1904 to June 1, 1905.

Spielrein’s childhood, marked by stress and high demands, caused her to manifest depressive crises as an adult, in addition to acute psychotic episodes.

It is curious that as a psychiatric patient he began to show an interest in studying medicine and delving into mental disorders . In fact, the figure of Carl Gustav Jung, who treated her, inspired her to opt for that profession. Jung treated Spielrein by applying recently developed psychoanalytic techniques to treat hysteria, a disorder which Sabina was supposed to have manifested.

According to the Swiss psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Spielrein’s parents themselves were hysterical . The father fulfilled the profile of an impulsive and angry person, in addition to being a physical and psychological abuser, while her mother was described as a childish woman.

After carrying out the relevant analyses of Spielrein’s life history before her admission, Jung carried out a treatment with the young woman which proved to be successful. However, the relationship between Jung and Spielrein changed from that of therapist-patient to that of lover.

Vocational training

After recovering, and taking advantage of being in the city of Zurich, Spielrein began his medical studies at the University of Zurich , although he did not yet leave the clinic in Burghölzli.

The University of Zurich was one of the first to accept women among its students, making it a real pole of attraction for those wishing to obtain a university degree, especially from Russia.

Sabina Spielrein was not the only Russian student on the faculty; however, thanks to her admission to the hospital, she had been able to improve her level of German, making her truly competent in writing medical papers in that language, which gave her some advantage over her Slavic compatriots.

Spielrein graduated in medicine in 1911, defending a thesis on a case of schizophrenia called Ãœber den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenie (About the psychological content in a case of schizophrenia).

Eugen Bleuler directed his thesis , and it turns out to be one of the first theoretical contributions to the approach, from a psychoanalytic perspective, of patients with schizophrenia.

The formative years are a little dark for Spielrein. Despite being a great student, she had her emotional ups and downs . Moreover, she was still in love with Jung, who was a married man. It was difficult for her to accept this reality, even though she wanted to have a child with the psychoanalyst. After accepting this, she decided to leave for Munich, where she would spend a few months studying art history.

Later on, being already an important person within psychoanalysis, Spielrein was elected member of the Wiener Psychoanalyrische Vereinigung .

In this association he presented his thesis on the drive for destruction, entitled Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens (Destruction as a cause of becoming).

Years after college

In 1912 she married Pavel Scheftel, a Russian doctor also of Jewish descent, leaving behind her time as a lover of Jung. From this marriage he had two daughters, Renate and Eva.

In the following years he would dedicate himself to clinical work from the psychoanalytic approach in several German cities, such as Vienna and Berlin, but settling down quite a bit in Geneva, Switzerland. There he came to work in the laboratory of Édouard Claparèd e.

While in Geneva, Spielrein focused on issues related to pedagogy and developmental psychology, giving lectures on applied psychoanalysis in children at the Institut Jean-jacques Rousseau.

In 1922 he came into contact with another of the most important figures in 20th century psychology, Jean Piaget , who was his psychoanalyst. Then, in 1923, Sabina Spielrein returned to Russia, which had already become a Soviet socialist republic. There she became a member of the Russian Psychoanalytic Association, in addition to working as an out-patient physician.

In Moscow, he worked in an educational institution, popularly known as the “white infirmary”, where the idea of raising children as free people as soon as possible was promoted. It is because of this that the Soviet government chose to close this center, since any display of individualistic thinking within the borders of the newly created Soviet Union was frowned upon by the communist authorities.

The Soviet government itself falsely accused the institution , indicating that sexual perversions of children were taking place there.

Last years

In 1936 the Soviet Union banned pedagogy definitively, so that Spielrein no longer had a legal licence to practise this discipline and was forced to opt for a position as a doctor in public schools .

In addition, psychoanalysis was outlawed in the union during the 1930s, although Sabina Spielrein continued to work in that vein until 1940.

It’s in this decade that things are getting especially tough for Spielrein. Her husband Pavel dies in 1937 of a heart attack, and her three brothers are arrested and forced to work in gulags during the Great Purge of Joseph Stalin (1936-1938). Sabina’s father died in 1938 of unknown causes, although there are suspicions of government intervention as well.

The reasons why the Spielreins suffered such a fate have to do with the intention of eliminating any perspective not in accordance with Stalin’s regime, this family being very much influenced by foreign currents.

Fortunately for Sabina, she would not be purged, but this did not save her from a tragic end like her brothers, only this time the executioners were Germans.

In August 1942 the city of Rostov was occupied by Hitler’s Deutsche Wehrmacht, and Sabina and her two daughters were killed , as were many other Jewish citizens of the city.

Contributions and importance of Sabina Spielrein

Sabina Spielrein’s main contribution to psychoanalysis is her concept of the destructive and sadistic drive , which led Freud himself to postulate the existence of the death drive, that is, the tendency to want to generate more evil than good. This concept makes sense if we look at it from the perspective of the era in which they lived, marked by war, anti-Semitism and genocide.

Another of Spielrein’s interesting contributions, made before he left for Vienna, is his study of a case of schizophrenia, specifically that of a very damaged woman with delusions of death and decay. In this case, Spielrein hypothesized that behind these delusions there were two apparently antagonistic tendencies: on the one hand, her tendency to destruction, to want to die, while on the other hand there was a marked sexual drive.

Spielrein’s personal history, together with her scientific production, has made her a very important character in psychoanalysis, although she is overshadowed by the figures of Freud and Jung and, above all, by having had a relationship with the latter, making her more famous for her love affairs than for her extensive work. In spite of this, Spielrein is recognised as one of the first psychoanalytic authors, as well as being a pioneer in the use of what, in her time, was a recently created neologism, the term schizophrenia.

Her interest in child psychology makes her a pioneer in the field of developmental psychology , being also one of the first authors to link Freudian postulates with language development.

Bibliographic references:

  • Spielrein, S. (1911). Ãœber den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenie (Dementia Praecox). Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen 3: 329-400.
  • Spielrein, S. (1912). Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens. Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen 4: 465-503.
  • Alnaes, K. (2004). The true story of Sabina Spielrein. Madrid: Ediciones Siruela.
  • Kerr, J. (1995). The secret history of psychoanalysis. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica.
  • Simón Macías, Trinidad (2014). Juego Limpio. Sabina Spielrein between Jung and Freud and the present times. Clinical Psychiatry.
  • Fuentes Barco, M., Martínez Alonso, B., Piñeiro García, S., & Angosto Saura, T. (2008). Biography of Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942): a history of the early years of psychoanalysis. Journal of the Spanish Association of Neuropsychiatry, 28(1), 109-117. Retrieved January 1, 2020, from http://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0211-57352008000100007&lng=es&tlng=es.