By Eva Gregersen and Sigurd Arild
Since a lot of misinformation and erroneous scholarship on Spielrein and her life seems to be circulating, it may be worthwhile to take a moment to clear up some of the misunderstandings.
1: Jung never spanked Spielrein (and probably not her coat either)
Let’s start by getting an obvious piece of sensationalism out of the way. Unlike what happened in the movie A Dangerous Method (2011), there is no evidence that Jung ever spanked Spielrein, neither as part of her treatment nor as part of their affair. That conception must be regarded as a figment of the filmmaker’s imagination. It is clear from their letters that their erotic relationship was tender in a traditional way and not sadomasochistic at all.[1]
On the other hand, Jung did claim that he “spanked Spielrein’s coat.” This remarkable incident allegedly took place because Spielrein dropped her coat on the ground and Jung then beat it to get the dust off of it. According to Jung, this beating provoked a violent reaction in Spielrein, which (again according to Jung) was most likely brought about by her masochistic symptoms.[2] However, as recent researchers have found upon a close inspection of the hospital archives and the Jung / Spielrein letters, there is simply no evidence (apart from Jung’s later account) of him ever having “spanked her coat.”[3] And since we know that Jung repeatedly twisted and distorted the facts of Spielrein’s case in other matters, it is far more likely that this alleged incidence of Jung “spanking Spielrein’s coat” was made up by Jung at a later date.[4]
2: Spielrein was not the cause of Jung’s concept of the anima
A common claim in the scholarship on Spielrein is the notion that she was the inspiration for Jung’s concept of the anima (i.e. the feminine aspect of the male psyche). For example, in the book Sabina Spielrein – Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis, the authors write: “It is very likely that we have Spielrein to thank today for the Jungian concept of the anima, which she most certainly represented for Jung.”[5]
However, more recent researchers have managed to uncover evidence to the contrary. While Jung was indeed led to postulate the concept of the anima on account of erotic attraction to an intimate, that intimate was not Spielrein, but Maria Moltzer. For one, Jung’s initial postulation of the concept is closer in time to his affair with Moltzer than with Spielrein. Second, as the Jung researcher Sonu Shamdasani has uncovered, the “female voice” that Jung experienced as calling out to him and which allegedly first made him aware of the anima was a Dutch voice, the implication here being that Moltzer was Dutch whereas Spielrein was Russian.[6] Finally, in Aniela Jaffé’s sealed notes for Memories, Dreams, Reflections, recording her direct interviews with Jung, one can read that the woman who led Jung to postulate the concept of the anima was Dutch.
3: Spielrein did in some ways prefigure Freud’s notion of the death instinct
In an odd twist of fate, Spielrein’s alleged prefiguring of Freud’s concept of the death instinct is perhaps her greatest intellectual claim to fame. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud himself cites Spielrein as an intellectual precursor on this matter.[7]
In recent times, however, the Freud researchers Todd Dufresne and John Kerr have argued that Spielrein’s idea was not really an intellectual forerunner of Freud’s. In particular, John Kerr has argued that while Freud talked about a primary force of destruction in the world (the death instinct), Spielrein simply pointed out that there are themes of death and destruction to be found in the erotic instinct.[8] While Kerr is correct to point out that there are minor differences between Freud’s and Spielrein’s concepts, the differences are just that – minor. Kerr has a legitimate point that Freud’s and Spielrein’s concepts are not identical, but at the same time this point does not support his wider assertion that Spielrein was therefore not a precursor in this regard. Kerr simply overstates his case here.
Todd Dufresne presents us with a different argument. As he sees it, we cannot take Freud’s reference to Spielrein seriously as such a literal reading of Freud would be blind to the shrewdness with which Freud often falsified his citations to suit his greater purposes. On Dufresne’s reading, Freud’s citation of Spielrein is therefore simply a ploy to distance himself from any similarities between his own thought and that of his one-time followers Adler, Jung, and Stekel.[9] Dufresne’s characterization of Freud is no doubt justified, but the fact remains that this charge of intellectual strategizing on Freud’s part does not change the basic relation between the two ideas. Even if Freud had not cited Spielrein at all, the similarity between their work would have been the same. Dufresne may thus be right that Freud only cited Spielrein because she was not a threat to him, but even if that is the case, it still does not detract from Spielrein’s intellectual accomplishment.
Finally, as Ryan Smith has pointed out, the real intellectual credit for the idea of the death instinct belongs neither to Freud nor to Spielrein, but to Empedocles.
REFERENCES
[1] Launer: Sex Versus Survival (Peter Mayer Publishers 2015), Chapter 7
[2] Jung: Psychiatric Studies §170
[3] Launer: Sex Versus Survival, Chapter 3
[4] For example, Jung also made up a story about Spielrein exhibiting anal-erotic symptoms when he presented her case to Sigmund Freud (thus serving the purpose of corroborating the Freudian theory of personality), even though none of the hospital records mention anything of the sort.
[5] Covington & Wharton: Sabina Spielrein (Routledge 2003) p. 7
[6] Shamdasani: Jung Stripped Bare (Karnac 2005) pp. 95-96
[7] Freud: Beyond the Pleasure Principle §6n14
[8] Kerr: A Most Dangerous Method (Vintage Books 1994) p. 501
[9] Dufresne: Tales from the Freudian Crypt (Stanford University Press 2000) p. 22