FOREWORD

Russian-Jewish Sabina Nikolayevna Spielrein (1885–1942) from Rostov-on-Don received her medical degree in Zurich, Switzerland. While in medical school, she was trained as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst by Professor Eugen Bleuler and Dr. Carl Jung who were also supervisors of her doctoral dissertation. She was later accepted by Sigmund Freud as a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association and went on to publish many psychoanalytic papers. In this book Spielrein’s development as a person and a professional is revealed in her Russian diary and letters all of which are presented for the first time in English translation and simultaneously are being published in Russian in Moscow by Vladimir Shpilrain. Additionally, included are her German diary entries and letters not previously published in English.

The relationship between Sabina Spielrein and Carl Jung was noted publicly in the Freud Jung Letters published by William McGuire in 1974 but did not at first arouse attention. This changed drastically after the publication of Spielrein’s German diary and correspondence by Aldo Carotenuto first in Italian in 1980 as Diario di una segreta simmetria—Sabina Spielerein tra Jung e Freud and thereafter in English in 1982 and 1884 as A Secret Symmetry, Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud. It was reviewed by Bruno Bettelheim in 1983 as “Scandal in the Family” in the New York Review of Books and reprinted as “Commentary by Bruno Bettelheim” in Carotenuto 1984. The scandal was an alleged sexual relationship between Spielrein and Jung an allegation rebutted in the Afterword in the present book. Carotenuto (1982) contained Spielrein’s German diary (1909–1912), letters from Spielrein to Freud (1909–1914), from Freud to Spielrein (1909–1923), and letters from Spielrein to Jung (1911–1918)—but no letters from Jung to her which were subsequently released by the Jung heirs. The aforementioned German diary and letters, including the letters of Jung to Spielrein, were first published in Germany in 1986.

Although from 1987 to 1997 I had discussed Spielrein in four publications, I was not aware of the Russian diary and correspondence until my colleague Dr.Fernando Vidal, author of papers on Spielrein and Jean Piaget, told me about a 1993 German dissertation of Wackenhut & Willke the manuscript of which was later sent to me by its supervisor Professor Wolfgang Eckart. The dissertation contained the German translation of the Russian diary and correspondence of Spielrein and it was an eye-opener! In 1998 I traveled to Geneva to visit Mme de Morsier, owner of the Spielrein archive, who graciously allowed me to examine the materials and compare the German translation with the originals. In the process I discovered key letters, not included in the dissertation. These letters were exchanged between Sabina and her mother. They offered new insight into the Spielrein-Jung relationship so I published them in 1999. My article made the German dissertation known to subsequent scholars studying Spielrein.

Some of the German material previously translated by Jeanne Moll (1983) and Brinkman & Bose (1986) has been retranslated for this book. A part of the 1993 German dissertation was included in a paperback by Traute Hensch in 2006 titled Sabina Spielrein nimm meine seele tagebücher und schriften (S. S. take my soul diaries and works), published by Edition Freitag. The words ‘take my soul,’ seem to copy Prendimi l’anima, the 2002 feature film by Roberto Faenza, titled The Soul Keeper in USA. In her well-researched 2005 book (republished as a paperback in 2008) Sabine Richebächer quoted sentences and passages from the Wackenhut & Willcke dissertation, my 1999 article, and from some Russian letters published in full in this book.

In 2003 in Moscow I met with Sabina’s nephew professor Evald Emilievich Shpilrain to discuss the publication of the entire Russian diary and correspondence. He suggested I contact his son Vladimir Shpilrain, mathematics professor at City University of New York (CUNY), who lived just a few blocks from me in New York City, now heir to the Spielrein archive. We later decided to collaborate on this project. In 2018 copies of the entire Russian archive were sent to me by Mme de Morsier and Vladimir Shpilrain found a professional manuscript expert, Svetlana Subbotina, who deciphered and transcribed the letters for us.

This diary, written in Russian until 1905 and continued in German till 1906, covering the period from age 11 to 21. Its pages depict the evolution of a precocious and perceptive teenager into a sophisticated medical student and an innovative psychiatrically trained psychoanalyst. For the first time English readers can see Sabina and her sophisticated family emerge as real-life people: with their characters, conflicts and conquests; their dreams, deeds, desires, and defenses; their destinies and dramas as shaped by the Bolshevik Revolution and the first and second World Wars.

Henry Zvi Lothane, New York, 2023.

Contents

Foreword, Introduction & Comments by Henry Z. Lothane, M.D.

The Russian Diary of Sabina Spielrein

Undated Fragments

Sabina Spielrein’s Interests, Readings, Remarks

Mixed Russian and German

Reading Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Nordau

Russian Letters of Sabina Spielrein and Family

Letters from Sabina to Her Mother

Letters from Sabina to Drs. Freud, Jung, Claparède and Eitingon

Letters from Nikolai Spielrein to Daughter

Letters from Eva Spielrein to Daughter

Letters from the In-law Family to Sabina

Letters from Yan Spielrein to Sabina

Letters from Isaak Spielrein to Sabina

Letters from Emil Shpilrain to Sabina and Others

Letters from Pavel Sheftel to Sabina and Her Parents

Letters from Spielrein’s Burgholzli Friends: Sokolnicka Ter-Oganesian, Aptekman, Morgenshtern, Kleiner

Letter from Menikha Spielrein to Dr. Lothane

Letters from Colleagues and Patients

German Diary

Essay on Transformation (Letter to Jung)