Sabina Spielrein: Biography Of This Psychiatrist And Psychoanalyst
Sabina Spielrein was a Russian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst whose life is interesting and, at the same time, tragic.
With a tough childhood and even worse adulthood, this researcher was one of the first women to study a university degree, dedicate herself to psychiatry and be a pioneer in the field of pedagogical sciences. In this article we are going to talk about her story through a summary biography of Sabina Spielrein
We are going to see Spielrein’s life path, which stands out for his intellectual brilliance and, at the same time, for the harshness of his family relationships and, also, with one of his lovers.
Early years
Sabina Naftulovna Spielrein was born on November 7, 1885 in Rostov, Russia, into a traditional, upper-class Jewish family.
Although it was normal in the city of Rostov for wealthy families to take their children to French schools, Sabina’s parents chose to have her attend a more alternative and innovative primary school. In that school the pedagogical approach was enlightened and liberal and stood out in comparison to the traditional Russian-French education in which the elites indoctrinated their children.
Since she was little, Sabina Spielrein was an avid learner, having extensive knowledge of music in addition to speaking up to four languages: English, French, German and Yiddish, a language that would help her later obtain fluency in Biblical Hebrew. But despite being intellectually very restless and having a very high academic performance, she was also a naughty girl, who was usually punished.
At eleven years old She was admitted to the Yekaterinskaya Gymnasium, a high-demand secondary school
Psychiatric confinement and contact with psychoanalysis
Sabina Spielrein’s childhood and adolescence were marked by quite raw relationships with her parents. Her father put a lot of pressure on her to get good grades in addition to forcing her to practice piano, violin and singing.
Surely it is all this family pressure that made the young Sabina end up emotionally oversaturated, causing her, at the age of 18, to need to be admitted to a psychiatric clinic, very far from her native Russia, in Switzerland She was treated at the Burghölzli Psychiatric Hospital, belonging to the University of Zurich. She would remain there from August 17, 1904 to June 1, 1905.
Spielrein’s childhood, marked by tension and high demands, caused her to manifest depressive crises as an adult, as well as acute psychotic episodes.
It is curious that as a psychiatric patient she began to show interest in studying medicine and delving deeper into mental disorders In fact, the figure of Carl Gustav Jung, who treated her, inspired her to choose that profession. Jung treated Spielrein using newly developed psychoanalytic techniques to treat hysteria, a disorder that Sabina supposedly manifested.
According to the Swiss psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Spielrein’s own parents were hysterical His father met the profile of an impulsive and angry person, in addition to being a physical and psychological abuser, while his mother was described as a childish woman.
After carrying out the pertinent analysis of Spielrein’s life history before being hospitalized, Jung carried out a treatment with the young woman that turned out to be successful. However, the relationship between Jung and Spielrein changed from therapist-patient to lovers.
Vocational training
After recovering, and Taking advantage of the fact that he was in the city of Zurich, Spielrein began his medical studies at the University of that same city although not without leaving the Burghölzli clinic yet.
The University of Zurich was one of the first to accept women among its students, making it a real attraction for those who wanted to obtain a university degree, especially those coming from Russia.
Sabina Spielrein was not the only Russian student at 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 a certain advantage over her Slavic compatriots. she.
Spielrein graduated in medicine in 1911, defending a thesis on a case of schizophrenia called Über 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 somewhat dark for Spielrein. Despite being a great student, He had his emotional ups and downs Furthermore, she was still in love with Jung, who was a married man. It was difficult for her to accept this reality, despite wanting to have a child with the psychoanalyst. After accepting this, she decides to leave for Munich, where she would spend a few months studying art history.
Later, being already an important person in psychoanalysis, Spielrein She was elected member of the Wiener Psychoanalyrische Vereinigung
In this association he presented his thesis on the drive for destruction, titled 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 his time as a lover of Jung. From this marriage she had two daughters, Renate and Eva.
In the following years he would dedicate himself to clinical work from a psychoanalytic approach in several German cities, such as Vienna and Berlin, but settling largely in Geneva, Switzerland. Over there He came to work in the laboratory of Édouard Claparèd and.
While in Geneva, Spielrein focused on topics related to pedagogy and developmental psychology, offering lectures on applied psychoanalysis in children at the Jean-jacques Rousseau Institute.
In 1922 He had contact with another of the most important figures in 20th century psychology, Jean Piaget , she being 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 outpatient doctor.
In Moscow he worked in a pedagogical 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, given that any display of individualistic thinking within the borders of the newly created Soviet Union was something very frowned upon by the communist authorities.
The Soviet government itself falsely accused the institution indicating that sexual perversions were carried out on children.
Last years
In 1936 the Soviet Union definitively banned pedagogy, so Spielrein no longer had a legal license to dedicate himself to this discipline and she was forced to choose to be a doctor in public schools
Furthermore, psychoanalysis was outlawed in the Union during the 1930s, although Sabina Spielrein continued to work applying that trend until 1940.
It is in this decade that things get especially raw for Spielrein. Her husband Pavel died in 1937 due to a heart attack, and her three brothers were arrested and forced to work in gulags during Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge (1936-1938). Sabina’s father died in 1938 from unknown causes, although there are suspicions that there was also government intervention.
The reasons why the Spielreins suffered such a fate have to do with the intention to eliminate any perspective not in line with Stalin’s regime, as this family was highly influenced by foreign currents.
Fortunately for Sabina, she would not be purged, but this did not save her from having an end as tragic as that of 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 murdered like many other Jewish citizens of the city.
Contributions and importance of Sabina Spielrein
Sabina Spielrein’s main contribution to psychoanalysis is his 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 harm than good. This concept makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of the time in which they lived, marked by war, anti-Semitism and genocide.
Another of Spielrein’s interesting contributions, made before leaving for Vienna, is his study of a case of schizophrenia, specifically that of a very deteriorated woman, with delusions containing contents 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 towards destruction, to want to die, while on the other there was a marked sexual drive.
Spielrein’s personal history, together with her scientific production, have made her a person of great importance in psychoanalysis, although overshadowed by the figures of Freud and Jung and, above all, by having had a relationship with him, making her more famous for his love affairs but not because of his extensive work. Despite this, Ella Spielrein is recognized as one of the first psychoanalytic authors, in addition to being a pioneer in the use of what, at 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 also being one of the first authors to link Freudian postulates with the development of language.
