Ordinary Unhappiness

20: A Dangerous Method: Sabina Spielrein, Carl Jung, Otto Gross

August 12, 2023 Patrick & Abby Episode 20
20: A Dangerous Method: Sabina Spielrein, Carl Jung, Otto Gross
Ordinary Unhappiness
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Ordinary Unhappiness
20: A Dangerous Method: Sabina Spielrein, Carl Jung, Otto Gross
Aug 12, 2023 Episode 20
Patrick & Abby

Abby, Patrick, and Dan watch David Cronenberg’s 2011 film A Dangerous Method, which dramatizes the complex relationships between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Sabina Spielrein in the first two decades of the twentieth century. They discuss Freud and Jung’s fraught relationship and eventual break; Jung’s relationship with Spielrein in life and on film; Spielrein’s biography and her pioneering work as a psychoanalytic theorist and clinician in her own right; other key figures in the development of psychoanalysis, including Eugen Bleuler and Otto Gross (especially Gross’s commitments to anarchism and his concept of mutual analysis); the role of Zurich and the Burghölzli Hospital as a key center of early psychoanalysis; Freud’s one and only trip to America; women as objects of exchange in the development of psychoanalysis; Freud’s Judaism versus Jung’s Protestantism and Jung’s maddening (to Freud) tendencies towards mysticism; and the ways that Spielrein’s work prefigures the late Freudian concept of the death drive. 

Books discussed include:

Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein, by John Lauren

Sabina Spielrein: the Woman and the Myth, by Angela M. Sells

The Essential Writings of Sabina Spielrein: Pioneer of Psychoanalysis, edited by Ruth I. Cape and Raymond Burt

Freud’s Women, by Lisa Appignanesi and John Forrester

The essay by Sabina Spielrein that Patrick discusses is entitled “Destruction as a Cause of Coming Into Being”

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107
 
 A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:
 
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Twitter: @UnhappinessPod
Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music

Show Notes

Abby, Patrick, and Dan watch David Cronenberg’s 2011 film A Dangerous Method, which dramatizes the complex relationships between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Sabina Spielrein in the first two decades of the twentieth century. They discuss Freud and Jung’s fraught relationship and eventual break; Jung’s relationship with Spielrein in life and on film; Spielrein’s biography and her pioneering work as a psychoanalytic theorist and clinician in her own right; other key figures in the development of psychoanalysis, including Eugen Bleuler and Otto Gross (especially Gross’s commitments to anarchism and his concept of mutual analysis); the role of Zurich and the Burghölzli Hospital as a key center of early psychoanalysis; Freud’s one and only trip to America; women as objects of exchange in the development of psychoanalysis; Freud’s Judaism versus Jung’s Protestantism and Jung’s maddening (to Freud) tendencies towards mysticism; and the ways that Spielrein’s work prefigures the late Freudian concept of the death drive. 

Books discussed include:

Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein, by John Lauren

Sabina Spielrein: the Woman and the Myth, by Angela M. Sells

The Essential Writings of Sabina Spielrein: Pioneer of Psychoanalysis, edited by Ruth I. Cape and Raymond Burt

Freud’s Women, by Lisa Appignanesi and John Forrester

The essay by Sabina Spielrein that Patrick discusses is entitled “Destruction as a Cause of Coming Into Being”

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! 484 775-0107
 
 A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:
 
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/OrdinaryUnhappiness
Twitter: @UnhappinessPod
Instagram: @OrdinaryUnhappiness
Patreon: patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappiness

Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
Provided by Fruits Music