Sabina Spielrein
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Sabina Nikolayevna Spielrein ( rus, Сабина Николаевна Шпильрейн, p=sɐˈbʲinə nʲɪkɐˈlajɪvnə ʂpʲɪlʲˈrɛjn; 7 November 25 October 1885 OS – 11 August 1942) was a Russian
physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
and one of the first female
psychoanalysts PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...
. She was in succession the patient, then student, then colleague of
Carl Gustav Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
, with whom she had an intimate relationship during 1908–1910, as is documented in their correspondence from the time and her diaries. She also met, corresponded, and had a collegial relationship with
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...
. She worked with and psychoanalysed Swiss developmental psychologist
Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemolo ...
. She worked as a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, teacher and paediatrician in Switzerland and Russia. In a thirty-year professional career, she published over 35 papers in three languages (German, French and Russian), covering psychoanalysis,
developmental psychology Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult developme ...
,
psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...
and
educational psychology Educational psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of human learning. The study of learning processes, from both cognitive and behavioral perspectives, allows researchers to understand individual differences in ...
. Among her works in the field of psychoanalysis is the essay titled "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being", written in
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
in 1912. Spielrein was a pioneer of psychoanalysis and one of the first to introduce the concept of the
death instinct In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive (german: Todestrieb) is the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness.Eric Berne, ''Wha ...
. She was one of the first psychoanalysts to conduct a case study on
schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social w ...
and have a dissertation appear in a psychoanalytic journal. Spielrein is increasingly recognized as an important and innovative thinker who was marginalized in history because of her unusual eclecticism, refusal to join factions,
feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
approach to psychology, and her murder in the
Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
.


Biography


Family and early life 1885–1904

She was born in 1885 into a wealthy
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family in
Rostov-on-Don Rostov-on-Don ( rus, Ростов-на-Дону, r=Rostov-na-Donu, p=rɐˈstof nə dɐˈnu) is a port city and the administrative centre of Rostov Oblast and the Southern Federal District of Russia. It lies in the southeastern part of the Eas ...
,
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...
. Her mother Eva (born Khave) Lublinskaya was the daughter and granddaughter of rabbis from
Yekaterinoslav Dnipro, previously called Dnipropetrovsk from 1926 until May 2016, is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper Rive ...
. Eva trained as a dentist, but did not practice. Sabina's father Nikolai (born Naftul) Spielrein was an
agronomist An agriculturist, agriculturalist, agrologist, or agronomist (abbreviated as agr.), is a professional in the science, practice, and management of agriculture and agribusiness. It is a regulated profession in Canada, India, the Philippines, the ...
. After moving from Warsaw to Rostov, he became a successful merchant. On her birth certificate, Sabina appeared as Sheyve Naftulovna, but throughout her life and on official documents she used the name Sabina Nikolayevna. She was the eldest of five children. All three of her brothers later became eminent scientists. One of them, Isaac Spielrein, was a Soviet psychologist, a pioneer of work psychology. Another was the mathematician Jan Spielrein. From her early childhood, Sabina was highly imaginative and believed that she had a 'higher calling' to achieve greatness, and she communicated about this privately with a 'guardian spirit'. However, her parents' marriage was turbulent and she experienced physical violence from both of them. She suffered from multiple somatic symptoms and obsessions. Some commentators believe she may have been sexually abused by someone in the family. She attended a Froebel school followed by the Yekaterinskaya Gymnasium in Rostov, where she excelled in science, music and languages. She learned to speak three languages fluently. During her teens, she continued to be troubled emotionally and became infatuated first with her history teacher, then with a paternal uncle. While at school, she resolved to go abroad to train as a doctor, with the approval of her
rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as '' semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form o ...
nic grandfather. At the end of her schooling she was awarded a gold medal.


Hospital admission 1904–05

Following the sudden death of her only sister Emilia from
typhoid Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by ''Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several d ...
, Spielrein's mental health started to deteriorate, and at the age of 18 she suffered a breakdown with severe
hysteria Hysteria is a term used colloquially to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that ...
including tics, grimaces, and uncontrollable laughing and crying. After an unsuccessful stay in a Swiss sanatorium, where she developed another infatuation with one of the doctors, she was admitted to the
Burghölzli The ''Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik Zürich'' (Psychiatric University Hospital Zürich) is a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland. As a research hospital, it is associated with the University of Zürich. It is also called Burghölzli, after ...
mental hospital near Zurich in August 1904. Its director was
Eugen Bleuler Paul Eugen Bleuler (; ; 30 April 1857 – 15 July 1939) was a Swiss psychiatrist and humanist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including " schizophrenia", "schizoid" ...
, who ran it as a therapeutic community with social activities for the patients including gardening, drama and scientific lectures. One of Bleuler's assistants was
Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, ph ...
, afterwards appointed as deputy director. In the days following her admission, Spielrein disclosed to Jung that her father had often beaten her, and that she was troubled by masochistic fantasies of being beaten. Bleuler ensured that she was separated from her family, later requiring her father and brothers to have no contact with her. She made a rapid recovery, and by October was able to apply for medical school and to start assisting Jung with word association tests in his laboratory. Between October and January, Jung carried out word association tests on her, and also used some rudimentary psychoanalytic techniques. Later, he referred to her twice in letters to Freud as his first analytic case, although in his publications he referred to two later patients in these terms. During her admission, Spielrein fell in love with Jung. By her own choice, she continued as a resident in the hospital from January to June 1905, although she was no longer receiving treatment. She worked as an intern alongside other Russian students there including
Max Eitingon Max Eitingon (26 June 1881 – 30 July 1943) was a Litvak-German medical doctor and psychoanalyst, instrumental in establishing the institutional parameters of psychoanalytic education and training.Sidney L. Pomer, 'Max Eitingon (1881-1943): The ...
, as well as expatriate psychiatrists who were studying with Bleuler, including
Karl Abraham Karl Abraham (; 3 May 1877 – 25 December 1925) was an influential German psychoanalyst, and a collaborator of Sigmund Freud, who called him his 'best pupil'. Life Abraham was born in Bremen, Germany. His parents were Nathan Abraham, a Jewis ...
.


Medical student 1905–1911

She attended medical school at the
University of Zurich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...
from June 1905 to January 1911, excelling there academically. Her diaries show a very broad range of interests and reading including
philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...
,
religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
,
Russian literature Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the ...
and
evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life ...
. She lived in several different apartments, mixing in a social circle of predominately fellow Russian Jewish women medical students. Many of these, together with Spielrein, became fascinated with the emerging movement of psychoanalysis in western Europe, and studied with Bleuler and Jung. Spielrein's main focus while in medical school was on psychiatry. A number of the students, like Spielrein, subsequently became psychiatrists, spent time with Freud in
Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
, and published in psychoanalytic journals. These included Esther Aptekman, Fanya Chalevsky, Sheina Grebelskaya and Tatiana Rosenthal. Politically, Spielrein identified with
socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...
, although some of her Russian student contemporaries were followers of the
Socialist Revolutionary Party The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs, , or Esers, russian: эсеры, translit=esery, label=none; russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров, ), was a major politi ...
or of
Zionism Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
. Spielrein completed her medical school dissertation, supervised first by Bleuler then by Jung, a close study of the language of a patient with
schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social w ...
. It was published in the ''Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen'', which Jung edited. She was one of the first people to conduct a case study on schizophrenia and have it published in a psychoanalytic journal. Freud referenced it in the same volume in his postscript to the Schreber Case; It was the first doctorate to appear in a psychoanalytic journal. Her dissertation contributed greatly to the understanding of the language of people with schizophrenia. It focused more attention on the mental illness and highlighted the need for more research. It was also the first dissertation written by a woman that was psychoanalytically oriented. She left Zurich the day after graduation, having resolved to establish an independent career as a psychoanalyst elsewhere.


Relationship with Carl Jung

While at medical school, Spielrein continued to assist Jung in the laboratory as she had done as an in-patient. She also attended his ward rounds and met him socially. The strong feelings she had developed towards him as his hospital patient continued during her first three years at medical school, and she developed a
fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...
of having a child with him to be called Siegfried. She did not have further therapy from him, although from around late 1907 he informally tried to analyze her wish for his child. In the summer of 1908, as she entered her fourth year at medical school, she and Jung began to have increasingly intimate encounters, which she described in her diaries as "poetry". There are differing views as to whether they had sexual intercourse. John Launer has reviewed the evidence from her diaries and their letters in his 2015 biography of Spielrein, ''Sex Versus Survival. The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein''. He concluded that they had consensual and erotic physical contact but stopped short of sexual penetration. This is supported by Spielrein's statement in a letter to her mother: "So far we have stayed at the level of poetry that is not dangerous." Lance Owens further summarized the documentary evidence in his 2015 study, ''Jung in Love: The Mysterium in Liber Novus'', Zvi Lothane, a Freudian psychoanalyst and scholar of psychoanalytic history, makes the most robust and well-supported case against a consummated sexual relationship between the pair. Lothane summarizes his conclusions:
People tend to believe as dictated by their own emotions, projections, and transferences. ... Our judgment should really be guided by what the protagonists never tired of asserting themselves: that there was no sex. In the final analysis the question is whether we believe their testimony or not. I choose to believe them, and not out of prudery, but because in those days people saw premarital sexual relations, especially as applies to Spielrein, differently than we do today; moreover, because unconsummated sexual desire was even more poignant and more romantic than consummated sex. However, the sexual myth dies hard, providing sensational material for a number of theatrical productions and a plethora of articles in the popular press and professional journals.
During the ensuing months, Jung wrote to Freud about the relationship, at first accusing Spielrein of having tried unsuccessfully to seduce him, and then admitting that he had become romantically involved with her. He sent a series of letters to Spielrein's mother, writing "no one can prevent two friends from doing as they wish...the likelihood is that something more may enter the relationship". Spielrein also wrote to Freud, making it clear that, for a few months, their relationship had been in some fashion physical, it had involved what Spielrein again called "poetry": "In the end the unavoidable happened...it reached the point where he could no longer stand it and wanted 'poetry'. I could not and did not want to resist, for many reasons' Eva Spielrein threatened to report him to Eugen Bleuler and came to Zurich to do so, but in the end decided not to. Meanwhile, Jung had resigned his medical post at the Burghölzli, although he continued his laboratory work and university teaching. A document-based account of these events, including the three-way correspondence among Spielrein, Jung and Freud, appears in Launer's biography. After a hiatus of several months caused by the tension, Spielrein and Jung resumed their relationship in the summer of 1909, and continued seeing each other privately up through the last months of 1910. Spielrein permanently departed Zurich around January 1911. In Spielrein's private diary entry dated 11 September 1910—just four months before graduating from medical school, and leaving both Jung and Zürich—she mused again upon her fantasy of bearing Jung's son. Sabina saw in reality how totally impossible it was, how it would ruin her chance of finding another love and destroy her scientific and professional ambitions:
With a baby I would be accepted nowhere. And that would be in the best of cases; what if I did not even get pregnant? Then our pure friendship would be destroyed by the intimate relationship, and our friendship is what is so terribly dear to me.
This personal diary entry from late-1910 strongly suggests that Spielrein realized that even if they were to finally have sexual relations, she might not get pregnant. And having taken that step, “our pure friendship would be destroyed by the intimate relationship....” Written shortly before her departure from Zürich, those words seemingly imply that whatever the nature of their physical "poetry", Jung and Spielrein had not engaged in sexual intercourse. Some commentators have seen Jung's conduct as a professional boundary violation, while others have seen it as an unintended and forgivable consequence of early experimentation with psychoanalytic techniques. The historian and Freudian psychoanalyst
Bruno Bettelheim Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903 – March 13, 1990) was an Austrian-born psychologist, scholar, public intellectual and writer who spent most of his academic and clinical career in the United States. An early writer on autism, Bettelheim's wor ...
commented on her treatment and the apparently beneficial result, noting that, "However questionable Jung's behaviour was from a moral point of view...somehow it met the prime obligation of the therapist towards his patient: to cure her”. By contrast, Peter Loewenberg (among others) has argued that it was in breach of professional ethics, and that it "jeopardized his position at the Burghölzli and led to his rupture with Bleuler and his departure from the University of Zurich". At the time, Freud was tolerant of what happened between Jung and Spielrein, and regarded it as an example of
countertransference Countertransference is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client – or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client. Early formulations The phenomenon of countertransference (german: G ...
. Later, he confessed to Spielrein that it had played a part in the schism between him and Jung: "His behavior was too bad. My opinion changed a great deal from the time I received that first letter from you". The relationship between Jung and Spielrein demonstrated to Freud that a therapist's emotions and humanity could not be kept out of the psychoanalytic relationship. Jung had come to the same conclusion. Before this episode, Freud apparently believed that a doctor could numb his emotions when analyzing patients. When Jung came to Freud about his relationship with Spielrein, Freud changed his ideas about the relationship between doctor and patient. Spielrein seems to have regarded her experiences with Jung as overall more beneficial than otherwise. She continued to yearn for him for several years afterwards, and wrote to Freud that she found it harder to forgive Jung for leaving the psychoanalytic movement than for "that business with me". Spielrein sometimes is regarded as having been the inspiration for Jung's conception of the
anima Anima may refer to: Animation * Ánima (company), a Mexican animation studio founded in 2002 * Córdoba International Animation Festival – ANIMA, in Argentina Religion and philosophy * Animism, the belief that objects, places, and creatur ...
, in part due to a reference Jung made 50 years later in ''Memories, Dreams, Reflections''—the biographical memoir compiled and edited by Aniela Jaffé—to an imaginatively encountered interior feminine voice that awakened his awareness of the interior anima. He recounted, it was "the voice of a patient ... who had a strong
transference Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from a ...
to me". However, in the unpublished transcript of Jung's comments recorded by Aniela Jaffé in 1957, Jung made it clear this woman was Maria Moltzer and not Spielrein. Nonetheless, Lance Owens has documented that the relationship with Spielrein was indeed crucial to Jung's evolving understanding of what he much later termed the anima.


Career 1912–1920 including "Destruction" paper

After graduation, Spielrien moved to
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...
to study art history, while also working on a paper on the connection between sex and death. In October she moved to Vienna, where she was elected a member of the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (, WPV), formerly known as the Wednesday Psychological Society, is the oldest psychoanalysis society in the world. In 1908, reflecting its growing institutional status as the international psychoanalytic authority ...
. She was the second female member of this society. She delivered her paper to the Society on 27 November as "Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being", publishing an amended version the following year in the ''Jahrbuch''. The paper shows evidence of both Jungian and Freudian thought, but appears to mark the point at which she moved from identifying herself with Jung to seeing herself as more of a Freudian. Freud explicitly mentioned her paper in a famous footnote to '' Beyond the Pleasure Principle'', acknowledging that it started the train of thought which led him to conceptualize the
death drive In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive (german: Todestrieb) is the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness.Eric Berne, ''W ...
: "A considerable part of this speculation has been anticipated in erwork". Spielrein's concept, however, was different from Freud's, in that she saw destructiveness as serving the reproductive instinct rather than one in its own right. Spielrein met with Freud on a number of occasions in 1912, and continued to correspond with him until 1923. She attempted in her correspondence with both Freud and Jung to reconcile the two men. In the "Destruction" paper, and throughout her subsequent career, she drew on ideas from many different disciplines and schools of thought. By age 26, Spielrien became the youngest to publish her works. In 1912 Spielrein married the Russian Jewish physician Pavel Nahumovitch Sheftel. They moved to
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
, where Spielrein worked alongside
Karl Abraham Karl Abraham (; 3 May 1877 – 25 December 1925) was an influential German psychoanalyst, and a collaborator of Sigmund Freud, who called him his 'best pupil'. Life Abraham was born in Bremen, Germany. His parents were Nathan Abraham, a Jewis ...
. Spielrein had her first daughter, Irma-Renata (known as Renata), in 1913. While in Berlin, Spielrein published nine further papers. One of these was an account of children's beliefs about sex and reproduction, in which she included recollections of her own early fantasies about this. Entitled 'Contribution to the Understanding of a Child's Soul', it shows her in more Freudian mode than her previous papers. In another paper, entitled ‘The Mother-in-Law’, she gave a sympathetic account of the role of mothers-in-law and the relationship between them and their daughters-in-law. The Dutch psychoanalyst van Waning has commented on this paper: ”Women's studies – in the year 1913!”. Another paper from the time recounts her treatment of a child with a
phobia A phobia is an anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobias typically result in a rapid onset of fear and are usually present for more than six months. Those affected go to great lengths to avoi ...
of animals, and is one of the first known reports of child psychotherapy At the outbreak of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, she returned to Switzerland, living briefly in Zurich again before relocating to
Lausanne , neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR ...
, where she and Renata remained for the rest of the war. Her husband joined his regiment in
Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Ky ...
, and they were not reunited for more than a decade. The war years were times of privation for Spielrein: she did some work as a surgeon and in an eye clinic, but also received contributions from her parents when they could get these to her. She did however manage to publish two more short papers during the war years. She composed music, and considered becoming a composer. She also began to write a novel in French. She recorded observations of her daughter's development in terms of language and play. She continued her correspondence with Freud and Jung and her development of her own theoretical ideas, particularly in relation to attachment in children.


Career in Geneva 1920–23 and work with Jean Piaget

In 1920 she attended the sixth congress of the
International Psychoanalytical Association The International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) is an association including 12,000 psychoanalysts as members and works with 70 constituent organizations. It was founded in 1910 by Sigmund Freud, from an idea proposed by Sándor Ferenczi. His ...
in
The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...
, where she gave a talk on the origins of language in childhood. The audience included Sigmund Freud, his daughter
Anna Freud Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribut ...
,
Melanie Klein Melanie Klein (née Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested t ...
and Sandor Ferenczi. She also announced her intention to join the staff of the
Rousseau Institute Rousseau Institute (also known as Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute or Academy of Geneva; ''french: Académie De Genève'' or ''Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau'') is a private school in Geneva, Switzerland. It is considered the first institute of e ...
in
Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situa ...
, a pioneering clinical, training and research centre for child development in
Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situa ...
. She remained there for three years, working alongside its founder Édouard Claparède, as well as other distinguished psychologists of the time including
Pierre Bovet Pierre Bovet (born on 5 June 1878 in Grandchamp (commune of Boudry); died in Boudry on 2 December 1965) was a Swiss psychologist and pedagogue. Bovet took up the translation of ''Scouting for Boys ''Scouting for Boys: A handbook for instr ...
. While she was there,
Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemolo ...
also joined the staff: they collaborated closely, and in 1921 he went into an eight-month analysis with her. In 1922, she and Piaget both delivered papers at the seventh congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
. This was one of the most productive periods of her life, and she published twenty papers between 1920 and 1923. The most important of these was a new version of the paper she had given at the Hague on the origins of language, drawing on her collaboration with the linguist Charles Bally. Entitled "The origins of the words 'Papa' and 'Mama'", she described how language develops on a substrate of genetic readiness, first through interactions between the child and the mother's breast, and then through family and social interactions. Her other papers from the time are mainly devoted to bring psychoanalytic thought together with observational studies of child development,. Her papers in the ''Zeitschrift'' and ''Imago'' from this time mainly focus on the importance of
speech acquisition Speech acquisition focuses on the development of vocal, acoustic and oral language by a child. This includes motor planning and execution, pronunciation, phonological and articulation patterns (as opposed to content and grammar which is language). ...
in early childhood and the sense of time. However,
Otto Fenichel Otto Fenichel (2 December 1897 in Vienna – 22 January 1946 in Los Angeles) was a psychoanalyst of the so-called "second generation". Education and psychoanalytic affiliations Otto Fenichel started studying medicine in 1915 in Vienna. Already ...
singled out for special mention her 1923 article on
voyeurism Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature. The term comes from the French ''voir'' which means "to see". ...
, where “Sabina Spielrein described a peeping perversion in which the patient tried to overcome an early repression of genital and manual erotogeneity, provoked by an intense castration fear”. Overall, her work during this period is thought to have had considerable influence on Piaget's thought, and possibly on Klein's. In 1923, discouraged by her lack of success in building up a private practice in Geneva, and with Freud's support, she decided to travel to
Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
to support the development of psychoanalysis there. She planned to return to Geneva, and left her personal papers, including all her diaries and correspondence, in the basement of the Rousseau Institute. In the event, she never returned to western Europe, and the papers remained undiscovered until they were identified nearly sixty years later by the Jungian analyst Aldo Carotenuto, who published a selection of them. The archive remains in the possession of the heirs of Édouard Claparède, and although further selections have been published in a number of books and journals, it has never been fully examined or catalogued.


Russian career 1923–1942

Psychoanalysis in Russia already had a turbulent history but its influence was strongest between 1921 and 1923. On her arrival in Moscow, she found herself the most experienced psychoanalyst there, as well as one of the most closely connected with analysts and psychologists in the west. She was appointed to a chair in child psychology at First Moscow University, and took up work in
pedology (children study) Paedology (paidology) is the study of children's behavior and development (as distinct from pedagogy, the art or science of teaching, and pediatrics, the field of medicine relating to children). Pedology is not commonly recognized as a distinct fie ...
, an approach to
pediatrics Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until the ...
that integrated it with developmental and educational psychology. She also joined the Moscow Psychoanalytic Institute, which had been founded in 1922 under the direction of Moise (Moishe) Wulff. She then became involved with an ambitious new project in children's learning known as the "Detski Dom" Psychoanalytic Orphanage–Laboratory (also known as the "White House.") Founded in 1921 by Vera Schmidt (who had also been one of Freud's students), the "Detski Dom" was intended to teach children based on Freud's theories. The school was only an orphanage in name: along with Schmidt's own son, the school had children from prominent
Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
(including
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
, whose son
Vasily Stalin Vasily Iosifovich Stalin ( ka, ვასილი იოსების სტალინი, russian: Василий Иосифович Сталин; surname since 9 January 1962 Dzhugashvili, , ; 24 March 1921 – 19 March 1962) was the son ...
was enrolled as well). Use of discipline was avoided and children were allowed maximum freedom of movement.
Sexual exploration Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied wit ...
and curiosity was also permitted. Spielrein's involvement included supervision of the teachers, and she may have supported them in a protest about their poor conditions of work, which led to their dismissal. The school had to close in 1924, in the wake of accusations of experiments to stimulate the children's sexuality prematurely. The accusations were possibly made in response to attempts by
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
to proletarianize the school's intake During Spielrein's time in Moscow, both
Alexander Luria Alexander Romanovich Luria (russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия, p=ˈlurʲɪjə; 16 July 1902 – 14 August 1977) was a Soviet neuropsychologist, often credited as a father of modern neuropsychology. He develope ...
and
Lev Vygotsky Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; be, Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on ps ...
came to work at the Psychoanalytic Institute and "Dyetski Dom" and studied with her. Spielrein's characteristic way of combining subjective psychological ideas from psychoanalysis with objective observational research of children is likely to have been an important influence in their early formation as researchers, leading them to become the foremost Russian psychologists of their time. In late 1924 or 1925, Spielrein left Moscow. She and her daughter rejoined her husband Pavel in
Rostov-on-Don Rostov-on-Don ( rus, Ростов-на-Дону, r=Rostov-na-Donu, p=rɐˈstof nə dɐˈnu) is a port city and the administrative centre of Rostov Oblast and the Southern Federal District of Russia. It lies in the southeastern part of the Eas ...
. As well as probably being disillusioned by her experience in Moscow, Spielrein may have been impelled to return because her husband by now was in a relationship with a Ukrainian woman, Olga Snetkova (born Aksyuk), and they now had a daughter, Nina. Pavel returned to his wife, and their second daughter Eva was born in 1926. For at least the next decade, Spielrein continued to work actively as a pediatrician, carrying out further research, lecturing on psychoanalysis, and publishing in the west until 1931. In 1929 she presented a vigorous defense of Freud and psychoanalysis at a congress of psychiatry and neuropathology in Rostov, possibly the last person to mount such a defense at a time when psychoanalysis was on the point of being proscribed in Russia. The paper also made it clear that she was up-to-date with developments in the west, and included sympathetic comments on the approach of Sandor Ferenczi, who was advocating a more emotional engaged role on the part of the therapist. She also talked of the importance of clinical supervision for psychological work with children, and described an approach to short term therapy that could be used when resources did not allow for extensive treatment. Her niece Menikha described her from the 1930s as "a very well mannered, friendly and gentle person. At the same time, she was tough as far as her convictions were concerned." Her husband died in 1936. In 1937 her brothers Isaac, Jan and Emil Spielrein were arrested, and executed in 1937 and 1938 during the
Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...
. Spielrein came to an agreement with Pavel's former partner, Olga Snetkova, that if either of them died, the surviving woman would care for their three daughters.


Death

Spielrein and her daughters survived the first German invasion of Rostov-on-Don in November 1941, which was repelled by the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
. However, in July 1942, the German army reoccupied the city. Spielrein and her two daughters, aged 29 and 16, were murdered by an SS death squad, '' Einsatzgruppe'' D, in
Zmievskaya Balka Zmievskaya Balka ( rus, Змиёвская балка, p=zmʲɪˈjɵfskəjə ˈbaɫkə), Zmiyovskaya Balka is a site in Rostov-on-Don, Russia at which 27,000 Jews and Soviet civilians were massacred in 1942 to 1943 by the SS Einsatzgruppe D dur ...
, or "Snake Ravine" near Rostov-on-Don, together with 27,000 mostly Jewish victims. Although most of the members of the Spielrein family were murdered in the
Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
, the wives and children of her brothers all survived, and there are currently around 14 of their descendants living in Russia, Canada, the United States and Israel.


Legacy

Despite her closeness to the central figures of both psychoanalysis and developmental psychology in the first part of the twentieth century, Spielrein was more or less forgotten in Western Europe after her departure for Moscow in 1923. Her tragic murder in the Holocaust compounded this erasure. The publication in 1974, of the correspondence between Freud and Jung, followed by the discovery of her personal papers and publication of some of them from the 1980s onwards, made her name quite widely known. However, it led to her identification in popular culture as an erotic sideshow in the lives of the two men. Within the world of psychoanalysis, Spielrein is usually given no more than a footnote, for her conception of the sexual drive as containing both an instinct of destruction and an instinct of transformation, hence anticipating both Freud's "death drive" and Jung's views on "transformation"; Regardless of the questionable relationship with Jung, something positive and very useful to psychotherapy was born from it. Jung's correspondence to Freud about his relationship with Spielrein inspired Freud's concepts of
transference Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from a ...
and
countertransference Countertransference is defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client – or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client. Early formulations The phenomenon of countertransference (german: G ...
. In recent years, however, Spielrein has been increasingly recognized as a significant thinker in her own right, influencing not only Jung, Freud and Melanie Klein, but also later psychologists including
Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemolo ...
,
Alexander Luria Alexander Romanovich Luria (russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия, p=ˈlurʲɪjə; 16 July 1902 – 14 August 1977) was a Soviet neuropsychologist, often credited as a father of modern neuropsychology. He develope ...
and
Lev Vygotsky Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; be, Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі, p=vɨˈɡotskʲɪj; – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on ps ...
. Spielrein's work has also been influential in several areas such as: gender roles, love, the importance of intuition in women, the unconscious, dream interpretation, sexuality and sexual urges, libido, sublimation, transference, linguistics and language development in children. Etkind's research in Russia in the 1990s shows that she did not "disappear" after leaving Western Europe, but continued as an active clinician and researcher. The publication in 2003 of a selection of essays about her under the title ''Sabina Spielrein, Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis'' has stimulated interest in her as an original thinker. The first scholarly biography of her in German, by Sabine Richebächer, places her relationship with Jung in its proper context of a lifelong career of involvement with psychoanalysis and psychology. Lance Owens suggests that the importance of Spielrein's relationship with Jung should not be historically discounted, but seen as an additional part of her legacy and broad creative influence. Owens provides evidence that Spielrein played a seminal role in Jung's personal psychological development, his understanding of love, and his subsequent formation of core psychological conceptualizations about "anima" and "transference". Followers of feminist and relational psychoanalysis are also beginning to claim her as an important progenitor. A milestone in reclaiming Spielrein as an original thinker was reached during the 2015 congress of the
American Psychoanalytic Association The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) is an association of psychoanalysts in the United States. APsaA serves as a scientific and professional organization with a focus on education, research, and membership development. APsaA comprises ...
, when the opening plenary lecture was given by Adrienne Harris, on "The Clinical and Theoretical Contributions of Sabina Spielrein", crediting her with pioneering relational psychoanalysis. Through her work on child analysis, Spielrein was able to differentiate between autistic languages and social languages. She differentiated between (primary) autistic languages and social languages (like song, words, etc.) and developed an exciting theory in the context of child development explaining the meaning of a mother's breast and sucking/nursing. The Memorial Museum Sabina Shpilereyn was opened in the Spielrein Mansion, her childhood home in
Rostov Rostov ( rus, Росто́в, p=rɐˈstof) is a town in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, one of the oldest in the country and a tourist center of the Golden Ring. It is located on the shores of Lake Nero, northeast of Moscow. Population: While ...
, in November 2015.В Ростове открылся музей ученицы Фрейда и любовницы Юнга Сабины Шпильрейн
/ref> John Launer's 2015 biography of Spielrein (in English, and written with the support of the Spielrein family) is based on close readings of her hospital notes, diaries and correspondence. It calls into question many of the received accounts about Spielrein. He challenges the presumption that Jung psychoanalyzed Spielrien in any systematic way, reciprocated her feelings for long, saw her as his 'anima', or regarded her as a more significant figure than his other female partners of the time. Instead, Launer sees her historical importance as someone who made an early attempt to harmonize psychoanalysis and developmental psychology within an overarching biological framework, anticipating modern ideas from
attachment theory Attachment theory is a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory concerning relationships between humans. The most important tenet is that young children need to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for normal ...
and
evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evo ...
. An English-language biography of Spielrein by Angela M. Sells, entitled ''Sabina Spielrein: The Woman and the Myth'', was published by
SUNY Press The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by ...
in August 2017.


Popular culture

* A documentary, ''Ich hieß Sabina Spielrein'' (''My Name Was Sabina Spielrein''), was made in 2002 by the Hungarian-born Swedish director Elisabeth Marton and was released in the United States in late 2005. The documentary was released in the U.S. by Facets Video, a subsidiary of
Facets Multi-Media Facets Multi-Media founded in 1975, is a non-profit, 501(C)3 organization, and a leading national media arts organization. Its mission is to preserve, present, distribute, and educate about film. Besides its facilities at 1517 W. Fullerton Ave., Ch ...
. * A 2002 biopic ''
The Soul Keeper ''The Soul Keeper'' ( it, Prendimi l'anima; french: L'âme en jeu) is a 2002 Italian-French-British romance- drama film directed by Roberto Faenza. It is loosely based on real life events of Russian psychoanalyst and physician Sabina Spielrein an ...
'' (''Prendimi l’Anima''), directed by
Roberto Faenza Roberto Faenza (born 21 February 1943) is an Italian film director. Born in Turin in 1943, Faenza received a degree in Political Science and a diploma at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Career Faenza made his directing debut in 1968 ...
, with
Emilia Fox Emilia Rose Elizabeth Fox (born 31 July 1974) is an English actress and presenter whose film debut was in Roman Polanski's film '' The Pianist''. Her other films include the Italian–French–British romance-drama film '' The Soul Keeper'' ( ...
as Spielrein and
Iain Glen Iain Alan Sutherland Glen (born 24 June 1961) is a Scottish actor. Glen is best known for his roles as Dr. Alexander Isaacs/Tyrant in three films of the ''Resident Evil'' film series (2004–2016) and as Ser Jorah Mormont in the HBO fantasy t ...
as Carl Gustav Jung. * Spielrein figures prominently in two contemporary British plays: ''Sabina'' (1998) by Snoo Wilson and ''The Talking Cure'' (2003) by
Christopher Hampton Sir Christopher James Hampton ( Horta, Azores, 26 January 1946) is a British playwright, screenwriter, translator and film director. He is best known for his play ''Les Liaisons Dangereuses'' based on the novel of the same name and the film ...
(based on John Kerr's book ''A Most Dangerous Method'') in which
Ralph Fiennes Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes ( ; born 22 December 1962) is an English actor, film producer, and director. A Shakespeare interpreter, he excelled onstage at the Royal National Theatre before having further success at the Royal Shak ...
played Jung, and Jodhi May played Spielrein. Both plays were preceded by the Off Broadway production of ''Sabina'' (1996) by
Willy Holtzman Willy Holtzman (born 1951) is an American playwright and screenwriter, often focusing on theatrical representations of actual historical events. Holtzman has received two Pulitzer Prize nominations, a Humanitas Prize, a Writers Guild Award, a P ...
. * Hampton adapted his own play for a feature film called ''
A Dangerous Method ''A Dangerous Method'' is a 2011 historical drama film directed by David Cronenberg. The film stars Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Sarah Gadon, and Vincent Cassel. Its screenplay was adapted by writer Christopher Hampton f ...
'' (2011), produced by
Jeremy Thomas Jeremy Jack Thomas, CBE (born 26 July 1949) is a British film producer, founder and chairman of Recorded Picture Company. He produced Bernardo Bertolucci's ''The Last Emperor'', which won the 1988 Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2006 he rece ...
, directed by
David Cronenberg David Paul Cronenberg (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation ...
, and starring
Keira Knightley Keira Christina Righton (; née Knightley, born 26 March 1985) is an English actress. Known for her work in both independent films and blockbusters, particularly period dramas, she has received several accolades, including nominations for ...
as Spielrein,
Michael Fassbender Michael Fassbender (born 2 April 1977) is an Irish actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, and nominations for two Academy Awards, four British Academy Film Award ...
as Jung and
Viggo Mortensen Viggo Peter Mortensen Jr. R (; born October 20, 1958) is an American actor, writer, director, producer, musician, and multimedia artist. Born and raised in the State of New York to a Danish father and American mother, he also lived in Argenti ...
as Freud.


Works

* A complete bibliography of all Spielrein's published writings (including details of English translations) is available at th
website of the International Association for Spielrein Studies
* Spielrein's papers in German from are available online at Collection of the International Psychoanalytic University, Berlin
(COTIPUB)
* :English translations: :1) :2)
Abstract
:3) * Spielrein, Sabina. ''Sämtliche Schriften''. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2008. (All of Spielrein's writings. In German. No English language edition.)


See also

* '' Jungfrauen'' *
Toni Wolff Toni Anna Wolff (18 September 1888 – 21 March 1953) was a Swiss Jungian analyst and a close collaborator of Carl Jung. During her analytic career Wolff published relatively little under her own name, but she helped Jung identify, define, and na ...
* Victor Ovcharenko - the Russian scientist who first introduced Sabina Spielrein's biography to the public in post-Soviet times


References


External links

* Launer, John
"Sex versus Survival. The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein"
Lecture at Freud Museum, London, 5 December 2014. Launer gives an evaluation of Spielrien and overview of his own research. * Owens, Lance S.
''Jung in Love: The Mysterium in Liber Novus''
(Gnosis Archive Books, 2015). This work offers an extended current evaluation of the relationship of Jung with both Sabina Spielrein and Toni Wolff
Online edition available.
* Lothane, Z
"Tender Love and Transference: Unpublished Letters of C. G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein"
''International Journal of Psycho-Analysis'', 80:1189—1204, 1999. This material later appeared in modified form in: Zvi Lothane, "Tender love and transference: Unpublished letters of C. G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein", in C. Covington and B. Wharton, eds., ''Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis'' (Hove: Brunner-Routledge, 2003), pp. 189–222. *

in The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names. {{DEFAULTSORT:Spielrein, Sabina 1885 births 1942 deaths Russian psychoanalysts History of psychiatry People from Rostov-on-Don Russian expatriates in Switzerland Russian Jews Jewish scientists Jewish feminists Russian people executed by Nazi Germany Russian psychologists Russian women psychologists Jewish psychoanalysts Russian women physicians Soviet civilians killed in World War II Russian women writers Carl Jung Members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society 20th-century psychologists People executed by Nazi Germany by firearm Soviet women physicians Russian Jews who died in the Holocaust