With the release of the movie "A Dangerous Method" last year, the life and work of Sabina Spielrein got a renewed interest. Although the movie is somewhat accurate about the relations of Jung and Spielrein, it fails in some other matters, mostly because of the source material (the book written by Kerr). Also the way Freud was portrayed was quite biased, as this old orthodox master, obsessed by ruling over his disciples.
The truth is that there are some excellent books on this subject and many articles covering the relation between Jung and Spielrein, the influence of Spielrein on Freud and Jung and the works of Spielrein about the children psychology and language. Among so many sources, two books deserve to be mentioned. The first is the biography written by Sabine Richebächer called Sabina Spielrein. This one is exactly what it promises: a detailed account of Sabina's life and work. The sad part is that the english translation of this book might be expensive, since it is somewhat rare to find one. There are options, since the book exists also in the german original, but also in spanish and portuguese translations.
History Psyhoanalysis
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
The Minutes of the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society
One of the most significant moments of the early years in the history of
Psycho-Analysis was the establishment of the several local societies
and of the International Association. The Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society
in particular was even more interesting, not only because of the active
participation of Freud, but because they kept a somewhat accurate
record of their discussions. These records have been published as the 4
volumes of the Minutes of the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society. I plan to
make some comments on each volume, pointing some interesting texts they
might contain.
The first volume contains, in addition to the minutes of the period from
1906 to 1908, an excellent introduction by Herman Nunberg that clearly
shows the importance of these minutes to the study of the history of
psychoanalytic thought of the early years. This section is followed by a
brief presentation of the participants of the society, which is very
useful since some of them are completely unknown.
Right on the beginning of the book we have Rank's presentations on the incest theme in literature. The discussions lasted for three weeks and took form on his huge book on incest (The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend). Rank was an expert in this kind of analysis of myths, and not only the discussion of his text, but also of the mentioned book is fascinating and a must read.
Buying new and used books
I have found an excellent online store for new and used books. I used to
buy mostly at Amazon, but the shipping is always very expensive,
sometimes even costs more than the book itself. I'll put the link to
this great bookstore and hope this will help anyone, especially people
living outside US that want to buy some cheap books.
A very short review of "Psychoanalytic Pioneers"
Psychoanalytic Pioneers is an
interesting book, published in 1966, which is shaped like an
encyclopedia. It is edited by Samuel Eisenstein and Martin Grotjahn, but
is written by almost 40 different authors. Each chapter deals with one
psychoanalyst and an author presents a summary of his life and work.
There is a chapter that presents the history of psychoanalysis in
England and another one in the United States.
The
book serves as a first contact with the authors mentioned. They are not
very detailed, which is to be expected because of its shape. However,
it covers an impressive amount of psychoanalysts in its more than 600
pages.
The authors presents the
most popular (like Abraham, Ferenczi, Rank) but also some who are not
widely read (Rado, Deutsch, Tausk, Starck). There are also a number of
psychoanalysts who have migrated to the United States and have produced
something closer to an ego psychology (Alexander, Hartmann, etc.). The
careful reader will miss some names, such as Sadger, Spielrein and even
Stekel.
Given the aforementioned
limitations, it is a very useful book for a quick search or a first step
in a larger study, as it contains several references at the end of each
chapter.
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