ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the division in the approach of the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, and that of psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein. It proposes that Piaget, unlike Spielrein, was never able to traverse the Alps: he remained on the lee side, unable to affect the crossing, not risking the undermining of communication by the unconscious. Piaget had analysis with Spielrein over the time that they worked together but saw this as a "learning experience" in which he was "glad to be a guinea-pig". Spielrein's paper is said to have influenced Freud in his development of the death drive. In German, the word for cause utilised by Spielrein is Ursache, which etymologically, is Ur-Sache, literally the primal thing. Spielrein was able to traverse the watershed of the Rhine and the Rhone: she moved from Zurich to Geneva via Vienna, from Jung to Freud, and from psychiatry to psychoanalysis.
