Wednesday, July 15, 2015

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.

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.
Himalayan salt


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.