ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the period of Spielrein’s gradual shift in personal and professional allegiance from Jung to Freud, with a close reading of her best-known 1912 essay, “Destruction as the Cause of Becoming,” which she read shortly after her admission to Freud’s Vienna Night Psychological Society around the time of the traumatic split between Jung and Freud. Included here is a summary of the paper, situating it in Spielrein’s biography, as well as a discussion of the reception of the paper in her own time and more recently. While this paper is best known as an early conceptualization of the so-called “death instinct” later formulated by Freud, a number of other themes emerge that concerned Spielrein throughout her career, giving evidence for Spielrein’s rightful place as a pioneer of psychoanalysis. The chapter ends with an exploration of how Spielrein’s fearless theoretical, religious, and mythological ideas enriched her creative work, but at the same time may have blinded her to the deadly reality of the Holocaust, which cost her her life.
