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Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
Dr. Jung wrote the following:
Your thinking is bold, far-reaching, and philosophical. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, August 8, 1911.
Your study is extraordinarily intelligent and contains splendid ideas whose priority I am happy to acknowledge as yours. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Dec. 23, 1912
You will see that this investigation is the necessary preliminary work for the psychology of Dem. praec. Spielrein’s case is proof of that (it’s in the Jahrbuch). ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Page 23.
This idea came originally from my pupil S. Spielrein: cf. “Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens” (1912). This work is mentioned by Freud, who introduces the destructive instinct in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (orig. 1920), Ch. V. [More fully in Ch. VI, which contains the Spielrein reference: Standard Edn., XVIII, p. 55.—EDITORS.]
Anyone who will look for “Spielrein” in Dr. Jung’s Collected Works will find her credited a number of times for her contributions:
If one reads the recent researches of the Zurich school, for instance the works of Maeder, Spielrein, Nelken, Grebel-skaja, and Itten, one gets a powerful impression of the enormous symbolic activity in dementia praecox. ~Carl Jung, CW 3, Para 390
regard to the mythological parallels, I would like to call your attention to the work of Boas,1 which includes a magnificent collection of American Indian sagas; then the book by Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes; and finally the works of Abraham, Rank, Riklin, Jones, Freud, Maeder, Silberer, and Spielrein, and my own investigations in Symbols of Transformation. ~Carl Jung, CW 3, Para 478
SPIELREIN, SABINA. “Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenie (Dementia praecox),” Jb. psychoanal. psychopath. Forsch., III (1911), 329–400. ~Carl Jung’s Collected Works, Bibliography.
Spielrein, too, gives some interesting examples of archaic definitions which, in the course of the illness, begin superimposing themselves on the meanings of words. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 200
What I said above about a disturbed reality function being replaced by an archaic substitute is supported by a remark of Spielrein’s: “I often had the illusion that the patients might simply be victims of a deep-rooted folk superstition.” ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 201
Spielrein evidently thinks symbols have a similar significance when she says: Thus a symbol seems to me to owe its origin to the striving of a complex for dissolution in the common totality of thought.… The complex is thus robbed of its personal quality.… This tendency towards dissolution or transformation of every individual complex is the mainspring of poetry, painting, and every form of art. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 201
If, for “complex,” we substitute the idea of “energy value,” i.e., the total affectivity of the complex, it is clear that Spielrein’s views fall into
line with my own. . ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 201
Spielrein’s patient associated the act of boring with fire and procreation. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 217
Concerning the substance of the rayed sceptre the following may be noted: Spielrein’s patient said that “God pierces the earth with his ray.” ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 638
Spielrein’s patient said of her snake: “It is God’s animal, it has such wonderful colours: green, blue, and white. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 677
SPIELREIN, S. “Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falls von Schizophrenie,” Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen (Leipzig and Vienna), III (1912), ~Carl Jung’s Collected Works Bibliography
Spielrein (pp. 358ff.) found numerous allusions to this motif in an insane patient. Fragments of different things and materials were “cooked” or “burnt.” “The ashes can turn into a man,” said the patient, and she also saw “dismembered children in glass coffins.” ~Carl Jung’s CW 5, Footnote 45.
Spielrein’s patient (p. 394) speaks of horses who eat human beings and even exhumed corpses. Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 29
Pindar, fr. 166f. Spielrein’s patient (p. 371) also had this idea of splitting the earth: “Iron is used for boring into the earth—With iron you can make men—The earth is split, burst open, man is divided —Man is cut up and put together again—In order to put a stop to being buried alive, Jesus told his disciples to bore into the earth.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 47
Spielrein’s patient said that she too had been shot by God three times—“then came a resurrection of the spirit.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 52
Spielrein’s patient was also sick from “snake poison” (p. 385). Schreber said he was infected by “corpse poison,” that “soul murder” had been committed on him, etc. (pp. 54ff.). ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 66
Spielrein’s patient (p. 336) uses the same images; she speaks of the “rigidity of the soul on the cross,” of “stone figures” who must be “melted.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 68
This fact led my pupil Dr. Spielrein to develop her idea of the death-instinct, which was then taken up by Freud. In my opinion it is not so much a question of a death-instinct as of that “other” instinct (Goethe) which signifies spiritual life. ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 38
Spielrein’s patient received three arrow wounds from God, through her head, breast, and eye, “then came a resurrection of the spirit” (p. 376). In the Tibetan legend of Bogda Gesser Khan, the sunhero shoots his arrow into the forehead of the demoniacal old woman, who then eats him and spits him out again. In a legend of the Kalmucks, from Siberia, the hero shoots the arrow into the “bull’s-eye” that grows on the bull’s forehead and “emits rays.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 94
Concerning the snake-kiss, see Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, III, p. 969. By this means a beautiful woman was set free. Spielrein’s patient (pp. 344f.) says: “Wine is the blood of Jesus.—The water must be blessed and was blessed by him.—He who is buried alive becomes a vineyard. ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 157
Spielrein’s patient (p. 345), in connection with the significance of the communion, speaks of “water mingled with childishness,” “spermatic water,” “blood and wine.” On p. 368 she says: “The souls fallen in the water are saved by God: they fall on deeper ground. Souls are saved by the sun-god.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 27
SPIELREIN, SABINA. “Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens,” Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen (Leipzig and Vienna), IV (1912), 465–503. ~Carl Jung’s Collected Works Bibliography
Cf. my Symbols of Transformation; also Spielrein, “Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenic”; Nelken, “Analytische Beobachtungen über Phantasien eines Schizophrenen”; C. A. Meier, “Spontanmanifestationen des kollektiven Unbewussten.” ~Carl Jung’s CW 8, Footnote 2
Spielrein, “Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falls von Schizophrenie” pp. 329ff. ~Carl Jung’s CW 11, Footnote 5,
Cf. “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass,” pp. 231f. For dismemberment, transformation, and recomposition in a case of schizophrenia, see Spielrein, “Ueber den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenie,” pp. 358ff. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Footnote 2
