ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews Spielrein’s life from birth (1885) through to 1911, the year in which she completed her medical studies in psychiatry at Zürich University and submitted her dissertation for publication. It focuses particularly on her own youthful transformation from brilliant adolescent suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder to self-aware analyst in the context of her “wild analysis” with C.G. Jung. Hospitalized for “hysteria” in 1904 at the age of 19, Spielrein’s episodic inpatient treatment with Jung was Jung’s first attempt at using Freud’s psychoanalytic method. By the following year, Spielrein was enrolled in medical school, later supervised as an intern by Eugene Bleuler and Jung. Her 1911 dissertation case gave careful attention to the symbolic communications of her schizophrenic patient, providing the foundation for her later writings regarding symbol, thought, and language. In the course of the intense transference/countertransference relationship that developed as Spielrein transitioned from patient to research assistant to medical intern, the ideas she shared with Jung influenced his 1912 publication Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Symbols of Transformation), where she is cited twelve times, as well as Jung’s later elaborated theory of the “anima” archetype. In Spielrein’s dissertation, we learn the meaning, borrowed from her patient, of the ambiguous term “poetry.”
