[MY NAME WAS SABINA SPIELREIN screens Thursday June 14th at 5:45 pm and Friday June 15th at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Pamela Zoslov
The
documentary MY NAME WAS SABINA SPIELREIN could
be seen as the antidote to A DANGEROUS METHOD,
the talky and surprisingly dull David Cronenberg film about the
relationship between psychoanalysis pioneer Carl Gustav Jung and
Sabina Spielrein, the young Russian-Jewish woman who was his
analysand and later, his lover. The documentary, directed by
Elisabeth Martón, tells the same story but from Spielrein's point of
view, based on a trove of Spielrein's papers — diaries, letters,
drawings and other writings — discovered in 1977 in the cellar of
the former Institute of Psychology in Geneva, Switzerland.
The
film skillfully weaves a narrative from Spielrein's writings with
photographs and reenactments of events. Spielrein was the 18-year-old
daughter of physicians when she came to the Burgholzi clinic in
Zurich, where her analyst was the 29-year-old Jung. Spielrein, Jung's
first patient, had developed a complex of unusual symptoms,
supposedly based on seeing her overbearing father beat her brothers,
which aroused her sexually. She was diagnosed with hysteria, the
standard diagnosis of the day for women. Alongside her rather
dramatic symptoms, which included repeated histrionic suicide
attempts, Spielrein had an impressive intellect and an ambition to
become a doctor. She quickly moved from patient to doctor's
assistant, and was discharged from the clinic after ten months to
attend medical school at the University of Zurich, where she
excelled despite obstacles based on her sex. “Stupid that I am not
a man!” she writes in her diary. “Everything is easier for them.”
Over the years, she continued to correspond with Jung, and fell
deeply and obsessively in love with him.
Cronenberg's film reveled in kink by depicting Jung beating Sabina to
noisy orgasm while she is a patient at the clinic. It's unclear
whether doctor and patient had a sexual relationship during her stay
at the clinic — it has been claimed that they did — but the documentary
suggests that a more conventional affair developed in the years after
her discharge. She wrote Jung long, fervent letters about her
feelings, and at some point, perhaps at the provocation of the
libertine morphine addict and psychoanalyst Otto Gross, he decided to
reciprocate. The resulting affair ended bitterly. Spielrein later
wrote that Jung stole her ideas on the “death instinct” for his
own paper (calling him “not my friend but a petty, sly rival”)
and toyed with her affections, “preaching polygamy” while staying
with his proper Swiss wife and children. Spielrein wrote letters to
Freud asking him to intercede. Freud, unaware of the affair,
responded with courtly concern.
Matters of sexuality, beginning with the Spielrein affair and
including what Jung considered Freud's excessively sex-based
theories, were the source of the later break between Jung and Freud.
As depicted in Cronenberg's movie, the Spielrein affair was the
subject of extensive correspondence between the two doctors. Jung
concealed the true nature of his relationship with Sabina, painting
her as a hysteric who had formed an irrational attachment to him. The
two male analysis avatars came up with the theory of
“counter-transference” to explain the phenomenon. Freud wrote to
Jung: “The way these women charm us with every possible psychic
device...is one of nature's greatest spectacles.” Professional
ethics were not a concern. Clearly there was a need for a feminist
voice in the cigar-smoky corridors of psychoanalysis. Spielrein,
whose contributions to the field have been sadly overlooked,
pioneered a feminine theory of schizophrenia. She was also an early
practitioner of child psychology.
It's
interesting to note that lying about sex was as popular then as it is
now. Strangely, in his autobiography, Dreams,
Memories, Reflections,
Jung portrays himself as the soul of rectitude, criticizing Freud for
being disingenuous about his own long-term affair with his wife's sister.
Freud
was determined to give psychoanalysis a medical-scientific
legitimacy, but today it is better understood in literary terms
peculiar to the Victorian era – sexual obsession and its
repression. Spielrein's overheated passion for Jung, as well as her
psychoanalytic theories, echo the “Liebestod,” or “love death”
theme of Wagner's Tristan
und Isolde. In her
florid letters and diaries, she agonized over the married doctor,
wanting desperately to bear him a child, which she gave the Wagnerian
name “Siegfried.” Destruction and death, never far from
Europeans' doors during World War I, burst into her theories:
“Destruction is a cause of coming into being,” she wrote.
Cronenberg's film lingered voyeuristically on Spielrein's orgasmic
grunts and grimaces. The documentary, while more sober, gets tangled
for a long while in Spielrein's romantic writhings. As it happens,
her affair with Jung may be the least interesting thing about her
life. The film's moving account of Spielrein's later years, which
included a return Russia, an unhappy marriage and persecution by
Stalin and by the Nazis, illustrates the triviality of Wagnerian romantic passion when compared to events in the real world. Spielrein was lured back
to Russia by the promise of bringing psychoanalysis to her homeland,
where she established a famous kindergarten. It was closed by
Stalin's regime three years later, and Spielrein, whose physician
husband was killed in Stalin's Great Purge, struggled to support
herself and her children. According to the film, Spielrein trusted
the Germans, refusing to flee Russia after the Nazis invaded. Her
decision proved fatal; she and her children were among 27,000 people
executed by the Nazis in 1941. 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.
I've been called lugubrious, but compared to this solemn narrative I'm Tickle Me Elmo. Watching the chronicle of a doomed, sad key figure in the early years of psychology made me grateful I took as few psych courses as possible during my college years. No wonder some folks think Dianetics has the answers (it did snatch up all those filmmakers)
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