A short comment on Spielrein

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.
The other book worth mentioning is Covington's Sabina Spielrein - Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis. This one is actually organized by Covington and Wharton, but contains articles from many authors and also letters and extracts from Spielrein's diary. There is even a translation to english of one article Spielrein wrote in 1923 about the origins of language in children. This book s is a must-have.

Comments on "Freud and the Bolsheviks"

I have noticed that some of the readers of this blog are from Russia. Coincidently, I have also been reading some books related to Russia or russian psychoanalysts, such as Spielrein, Wulff, Rosenthal and others. One of the most interesting books I have found in quite some time is "Freud and the Bolsheviks", by Martin Miller.

This great book starts with a historical account of the psychological research in the imperial Russia and gradually takes you to the moment when psychoanalysis entered the country. Then the author proceeds showing how this new theory was received and actually supported by the government during the first years after the revolution, only to be prohibited after the death of Lenin.

The final chapters focus on the renewal of the interest of the Russians for Psychoanalysis after the years of prohibition.

This is a great book for a quick overview of the development of Psychoanalysis in Russia and the extensive bibliography at the end give some nice hints on what to read if you intend to study this subject in more detail.

For the book:

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.

Another point of interest is to follow Adler's presentations throughout the period. We can see how he increasingly turns away from psychoanalysis and how the members of the society reacted to his theories and hypotheses.

In addition to the works of the most known psychoanalysts, there is also some good presentations from others. For example Max Graf's text titled "Methodology of the Psychology of Poets". The minutes of this one are particularly detailed since they contain the manuscript presented and makes this a very enriching experience.

I might go on and talk about some other author or theme, but I believe that this short comment might be just enough for those who were interested in the Minutes to try and read those great books. I'll post in the future more on the others volumes.

For the books on this post:

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.

BetterWorld 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.

Psychoanalytic Pioneers

Short review of "Victor Tausk's Suicide", by Kurt R. Eissler

After reading "Brother Animal", we get the impression that Tausk was merely a victim of Freud and his death was almost a murder. However, these facts can be viewed from another angle, and that's what Eissler tries to do.

He soon dismisses a considerable part of Roazen's statements and focus in another aspect of Tausk's life: his relationships with women. Starting with the relation with the mother all the way through his affair with a patient, which he seduced in the first session.

This woman was Hilde Loewi, his fianceé at the time of his death. The marriage was scheduled to july, the same month Tausk commited suicide. Eissler presents the hypotesis that Loewi was pregnant and tried (with the help of Tausk) to abort. After that failed, he decided to get married to avoid the severe consequences of his actions. Eissler goes a bit further and says that the imediate cause of the suicide was an episode of impotency at the night before.

After this, Eissler goes a long way to tell us about the life of Otto Gross and Wedekind, trying to make some parallel to Tausk's alleged psychosis. Sounds like he is trying hard to take the focus away from Tausk's relation with Freud, and locating his conflicts elsewhere. If Roazen's book was a praise to Tausk and an attack on Freud, Eissler's is the complete opposite. Even with the quality work on research of historical documents and style of writing, we feel at the end that this is not an account of what really happened in Tausk's life.
More info: Victor Tausk's Suicide

Paul Roazen's "Brother Animal"

Roazen's book, published in 1969 recovers the history of a forgotten psychoanalyst, Victor Tausk. Even today, Tausk usually is cited only as Lou Salome's lover. Even though he wrote some important papers, especially in the field of psychosis, he remains unknown to almost every psychoanalyst.

Roazen researchs the conflicts between Freud and Tausk, their difficult relationship and the suicide of the latter. Although some of his statements are a little too controversial, he usually bases them on historical documents. At first his hypothesis seems shocking, but only shows a more human Freud, struggling with internal and external problems, participating against his will in Tausk's tragedy.

The works of Tausk have been published in german and there is also a collection of his psychoanalytic writings in english. There are a few translations to other languages (such as portuguese) but his books are not best sellers, and are really hard to find in some countries.

Back to the book's theme, Roazen's hypothesis is that Tausk had some conflicts with Freud, specially because he thought Freud was using his ideas without proper recognition. Freud too was afraid that Tausk could take some of his own ideas and present them as if he had created them. In the middle of this, Tausk asks Freud to analyse him, and is denied and sent to Helene Deutsch. This treatment is interrupted 3 months later by Freud, who was analysing Helene Deutsch at the time. Three more months after this event, Tausk killed himself, in a very violent manner. The impression one gets is that Tausk really had the potential to be one great psychoanalyst, but falled victim of his neurosis and reached to Freud for salvation. Being denied that, he didn't find the strength to continue and ended his life.

After this book was published, Kurt R. Eissler wrote "Victor Tausk's Suicide", in which he tries to explain his point of view on the death of Tausk. In the future I will also discusse this book in some detail.

For more information:

Brother Animal