Sabina Spielrein and the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis

Sabina Spielrein stands as both an important and tragic figure—misunderstood or underestimated by her fellow analysts (including Jung and Freud) and often erased in the annals of psychoanalytic history. Her story has not only been largely forgotten, but actively (though unconsciously) repressed as the figure who represented a trauma buried in the early history of psychoanalysis.


Sabina Spielrein and the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis joins the growing field of scholarship on Spielrein’s distinctive and significant theoretical innovations at the foundations of psychoanalysis and serves as a new English language source of some of Spielrein’s key works. The book includes:

Four chapters by Felicity Brock Kelcourse, Pamela Cooper-White, Klara Naszkowska, and Adrienne Harris spanning Spielrein’s life and exploring her works in depth, with new insights about her influence not only on Jung and Freud, but also Piaget in Geneva and Vygotsky and Luria in Moscow.

A timeline providing readers with important historical context including Spielrein, Freud, Jung, other theorists, and historical events in Europe (1850-1950).

Twelve new translations of works by Spielrein, ten of which are the first ever translations into English from the original French, German, or Russian.


Spielrein’s life and works are currently undergoing a serious and necessary critical reclamation, as the fascinating chapters in this book attest. Sabina Spielrein and the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis will be of great significance to all psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, analytical psychologists, and scholars of psychoanalysis interested in Spielrein and the early development of the field.