ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the period in Spielrein’s life from 1923, the year she left Geneva for Russia, until her untimely and brutal death at the hands of the Nazis in 1942. Spielrein played a prominent role in the development of psychoanalytic work in Russia, particularly in relation to early childhood development and education during the brief period of Trotsky’s ascendency, and then the Stalinist era, when psychoanalysis was forced underground. The chapter sets Spielrein’s life and work against the historical and political background of the newly formed USSR, Marxism, Stalinist purges, the Holocaust, and the unfortunate fate of Russian psychoanalysis. Spielrein was in close contact with Luria and Vygotsky, probably as their instructor. Luria adopted her approach to child analysis, and Vygotsky her focus on the relationship between language, speaking, and thought in children, to become internationally renowned as a neuropsychologist and a developmental psychologist, respectively. The most innovative idea presented in this chapter is that Spielrein’s model of the development of language and thought anticipated Jacques Lacan’s concept of the three orders, as well as Hélène Cixous’ and Luce Irigaray’s concepts of a positive feminine language (écriture féminine) associated with the mother, corporality, and feminine jouissance.
