Shpilrein-Sheftel Sabina Nikolaevna is known to the world as a Soviet psychoanalyst and student of Karl Gustave Jung, a member of three psychoanalytic societies and the author of the theory of destructive attraction. But no less interesting than the results of professional activity are its biography and the path to science.
Intriguing facts contain her diaries and correspondence between Jung and Freud, published in the early 80s, which made a splash in the world of psychoanalysis. The secrets of this woman's life still raise more questions than answers.
Sabina's parents
Shpilreyn Sabina Nikolaevna, whose real name is Sheiwe, was the eldest of the children. She was born on October 25 (old style November 7) in 1885 in a fairly wealthy Jewish family. At that time, they lived in Rostov-on-Don. The father insisted that the daughter was able to attend the prestigious kindergarten in Warsaw, in the parents' homeland. Therefore, in the period from 1890 to 1894 the family was there.
Father and head of the family - Nikolai Arkadyevich Shpilrein (Naftael, or Naftuli Movshevich, or Moshkovich) - was an entomologist by training, but did not work by profession and was successful in trade. He was a manufacturer and seller of cattle feed. In the future, Nikolai Arkadevich became a merchant of the first, and after the second guild.
Mom, Evva Markovna Lublin (after the marriage of Spielrein), was a dentist by education. She had her apartment building on three floors in the city center, where apartments were rented. She practiced dentistry until 1903, after which she devoted herself to the family and raising children. In her family there were many respected rabbis, including the father of Eva Markovna.
Despite the strict order and traditions, the family led a secular lifestyle.
In 1917, the property of the Spielrein couple was confiscated.
The fate of brothers and sisters
The eldest of the brothers, Jan, was born in 1887. Subsequently, he became a famous Soviet mathematician and engineer, a specialist in theoretical mechanics and electrical engineering. By 1921 he was already a professor, in 1933 he became a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1934, he defended his doctorate in technical sciences. He was married to Sylvia Borisovna Ryss.
The second brother, Isaac, was born in 1891. He chose psychology for himself and studied at the universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig. He achieved significant success in this field of knowledge, as he was remembered by the domestic and world scientific community as the author of psychotechnics. He studied the psychology of labor, methods of rationalizing it, etc., took an active part in the work of its scientific organization in the Soviet Union. In addition, he headed the All-Russian Society of Psychotechnics and Applied Psychophysiology and the International Psychotechnical Association.
The third brother, Emil, was born in 1899. After graduating from Don University, he became an assistant professor and dean of the University of Rostov at the Faculty of Biology. Emil is better known to the scientific world under the name Spielrein.
All three, despite their position in the scientific world, were shot as a result of political repression: Isaac in 1937, and Jan and Emil in 1938. Later, all three were rehabilitated posthumously.
More than anything, Shpilrein Sabina Nikolaevna loved her younger sister Emilia. But in 1901, a six-year-old girl fell ill with typhoid fever and soon died.
Sabina's tragedy and other causes of mental disorders
The main cause of Sabina’s neurosis is the death of her beloved sister. However, some specialists, in particular Renate Höfer, Ph.D., who deals with psychotherapy and supervision, have a different opinion. In Renata’s book, Psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein, the heroine’s biography has been studied in detail and framed in a psychological portrait, taking into account all the joyful love experiences and heavy mental anguish. According to the author, the sister’s death was far from the only and not the main cause of this woman’s illness.
Renata writes that from an early age, Sabina Spielrein experienced physical punishment from her father and, very likely, sexual violence from adults. By the age of three, she already had serious mental disorders that did not leave her at a young age. She was excited by the sight of her father’s right hand, regularly punishing her, which led to excessively frequent acts of self-satisfaction.
From time to time, she fantasized that she had unlimited power, and this helped her calm down for a while. Nevertheless, from the age of sixteen she began to be overcome by nightly fears and hallucinations, and by the age of eighteen, more and more psychic seizures began to occur, after which she became depressed.
Psychiatric Clinic for Sabina
Sabina Shpilreyn was a capable student, and nervous disorders did not prevent her from graduating from high school with a gold medal in 1903. Medicine was her addiction, but due to an unstable mental state, her studies at the University of Zurich had to be postponed.
First, Eva Markovna made an unsuccessful attempt to improve the well-being of her daughter in the Swiss sanatorium of Dr. Geller in the spring of 1904. After that, Sabina was sent to the Burghölzli clinic, which at that time was headed by Professor Eigen Bleiler (Eugen Bleuler).
It was there that Carl Jung and Sabina Spielrein first met. First, the manager himself was engaged in the treatment of hysteria in the girl, and then Jung was the senior doctor of the clinic and subsequently the deputy chief doctor. The therapy in the clinic lasted about 10 months, from August 1904 to June 1905, after which the treatment became outpatient and lasted until 1909.
Sabina was the first patient that Jung tried to heal using psychoanalytic techniques based on Freudian theories. And although there were certain skirmishes between the patient and the staff, accompanied by suicidal manifestations, the treatment was very successful, which allowed Sabina to realize the plans for studying at the university and enter it in April 1905.
Professional activity
During treatment at the clinic, Sabina Spielrein participated in various experiments, including in the associative. There she got acquainted with the theme of Jung's dissertation, which deals with the stratification of the conscious and unconscious - schizophrenia. Therefore, it is absolutely natural that during the training Sabina became interested in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and pedology.
In the spring of 1909, Sabina passed the final exams and went to work at the Burghölzli clinic as an intern. All this time, she continued to work on a doctoral dissertation, the supervisor of which was Jung. Despite the vicissitudes in her personal life, in the spring of 1911 she successfully defended her and published it in a journal edited by her mentor.
From the autumn of 1911 until the spring of 1912, Sabina was in Austria, where she was able to personally recognize Sigmund Freud (Freud) and was accepted into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Then she visited Russia with lectures and there she met her future husband - Pavel Naumovich (Fayvel Notovich) Sheftel.
In 1913, Sabina Nikolaevna left for Europe. There she was engaged in publications, speeches; worked in various medical institutions, including with Eugen Bleiler, Karl Bonhoeffer, Eduard Clapared; was engaged in psychoanalysis with Freud and Jung, became a psychoanalyst of Jean Piaget.
In 1923, she returned to Russia and entered the Russian psychoanalytic society. She was engaged in professional activities in this field, created a psychotherapeutic orphanage and managed it, gave lectures.
In 1925, she last spoke at the Congress of Psychoanalysts. Then she continued to work in the chosen field, and published articles.
Since 1936, psychoanalysis in the USSR has been banned.
It is worth noting that Sabina Shpilrein had high hopes for work in Russia. Quotes regarding this are quite well known, she returned to “work with pleasure” - her pursuit of science gave her true pleasure. However, in these last 20 years of her life, the regime of the Soviets left her idle throughout her life.
Scientific work
Sabina Spielrein's theory speaks of the duality of sexual attraction. On the one hand, sexual intercourse must carry positive emotions, especially since this process is associated with procreation. On the other hand, it acts destructively on the inner world of man.
In addition, Shpilreyn claimed, during the act, a certain decay of the main extracts takes place - the masculine beginning acquires the features of a female, and vice versa. Moreover, pleasure and fear are destructive to the sex drive itself.
Hence the intrapersonal conflict arises . Sabina Shpilreyn noticed that many of her patients, when possible, realize their desire to have fear and desire to run away, fear that this is the peak of everything, and after that there will be nothing of the kind.
In addition, Spielrein for the first time raises the question of death drive as the primary instinct of human life, masochism, designating the sadistic component as a destructive attraction.
Sabina Spielrein: personal life
About the love of Sabina in his attending physician, her parents learned in the fall of 1905. The girl’s mother even wanted Freud to continue the treatment, but everything remained the same due to other circumstances.
Sabina Shpilreyn herself never hid her feelings for Jung, and, as the diary notes indicate, she even wanted a child from him. In the summer of 1908, Jung admitted that the girl was extremely attractive to him, and that he was no longer able to restrain his desire for her (despite the presence of a wife). From that moment, it was not only psychoanalysis that began to unite them.
During work in the clinic, a conflict occurred in their relationship, and subsequently, in the spring of 1909, Jung left work. Then Sabina began to correspond with Freud. Jung, after the scandal and the public details of their relationship, stated that he was a supporter of polygamy.
In 1909, Sabina renewed her relationship with Jung to work on her dissertation. In 1912, she married Sheftel, and at the end of 1913 they had their first daughter, Renata (Irma Renata), and in the summer of 1926, a second girl named Eva.
In the period from 1913 to 1925-1926. Sabina did not live with her husband. He was in Rostov, she was in Europe and since 1924 in Moscow, but after the spouse resumed relations. During this time, Sheftel met with another woman who gave birth to a daughter from him.
In the summer of 1937, Sheftel died of a heart attack, although there were suggestions that he committed suicide due to fear of reprisals. In 1941, Sabina Spielrein-Scheftel refused to believe in the atrocity of German soldiers and did not begin to evacuate from Rostov. In July 1942, the house where Sabina lived with her daughters burned down.
On August 11–12, 1942, tens of thousands of Jews, among whom were Sabina Shpilrein-Scheftel and both of her daughters, were shot in the Zmievsky beam.
Epilogue. Jung - Sabina - Freud
In the late 70s, a suitcase with Sabina's personal materials was found in the archive of Eduard Clapared. It turned out that before leaving for Russia, she left her diaries there, correspondence with Jung and Freud (which she kept until 1923), some articles and research materials. These documents, in particular diaries and letters, produced the effect of an exploding bomb on the world scientific community.
It turned out that from the very beginning of the treatment of Sabina Jung and the manifestation of her feelings for him, Freud was aware of this. However, he did not condemn his colleague, because he did not consider it something immoral or wrong and even sympathized with him to some extent. Assessing this position of Freud, analysts began to talk about a "conspiracy" between Jung and Freud, in which Sabina became a bargaining chip.
Jung then needed material for writing a dissertation, and Sabina was not only a suitable option, including in terms of financial security, but also a very interesting person who pushed the scientist to new ideas. There is no doubt about this, since both Jung and Freud in their further work used the ideas voiced by Sabina. Therefore, the continuation of work with her for Jung was much more necessary than observing morality, especially, according to Freud himself, for the world of psychoanalysis, the connection of a doctor with a patient is not news.
On the other hand, in addition to mental suffering from unrequited feelings, meeting these two men gave her the world of psychoanalysis and the work of her whole life.
Sabina Spielrein became the first woman in Europe to defend a doctorate in psychology. She was among the "pioneers" of psychoanalysis, but was forgotten for half a century. And only the opening of the archive gave both her and her works a second life. Based on the documents, several films were shot, books were written. And in fact, this interest is fully justified.