Sabina Spielrein.

摘要

In November 1885 Sabina Spielrein was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, into the family of a businessman (Nikolai) and his dentist wife (Eva). She was a brilliant student, but in 1904, soon after she finished high school, she was dropped off by her uncle and a medical police officer at the Burgholzli Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich, headed by Eugen Bleuler (1). Her hospital records noted, "The patient laughs and cries in a strangely mixed, compulsive manner, ... masses of tics, rotating head, sticks out her tongue, legs, twitching" (2). The notes were written by a newly qualified Carl Gustav Jung, who diagnosed her as having psychotic hysteria on the basis of her difficult childhood, characterized by a "painful love" with her father. In a late letter to Freud, Jung wrote, "The physical chastisements administered to the patient's posterior by her father from the age of four until seven had unfortunately become associated with the patient's premature and now highly developed sexual awareness" (2). The therapeutic effect of the psychoanalysis exceeded all Jung's expectations, and they fell in love: "During treatment the patient had the misfortune to fall in love with me" (2). It is unknown whether Jung had sexual intercourse with his "little girl" (3) or if it was only a platonic "nonerotic love in the therapeutic relationship" (4). Whatever the truth, 5 years of increasingly intense relations followed, until 1909 (1), when Jung retired from Burgholzli (5). He later claimed that he maintained contact with her only because he "feared a relapse." Nevertheless, the transference romance was characterized by poison-pen letters, talks, correspondence, visits, accusations and counter-accusations, excuses, and rumors (2), with a clear breach of the doctor-patient boundary (4). Additionally, Spielrein entered into correspondence with Freud in 1909 and in so doing aggravated the already complex relationship between Jung and Freud (2).