ABSTRACT
This is Spielrein’s best-known work to date, with which she made her scholarly “debut” at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1911. The paper appears in three other English translations to date and continues to puzzle and fascinate scholars and translators wishing for a better grasp of her complex early theorizing. Steeped in symbolism, it represents her efforts to bridge her deep, mutually informed work with Jung together with Freudian psychoanalytic principles and, as well, her biological training as a physician. A highly original work, it offers a unique perspective on both women’s sexual experience and the earliest known formulation of the death instinct, and it represents the culmination of her early work most influenced by Jung.
