SABINA SPIELREIN'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF SCHIZOPHRENIA. HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE DEATH INSTINCT

SABINA SPIELREIN'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF SCHIZOPHRENIA. HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE DEATH INSTINCT. This article sets out to illustrate the clinical and theoretical activities of Sabina Spielrein, a forgotten pioneer of our discipline. This Russian psychoanalyst, known especially for her affair with Jung, ventured into one of the earliest investigations of psychotic pain by means of the psychoanalytic method. Through the analysis of a patient called "Martha N.", Spielrein formulated original concepts that found their final classification only many years later: transference psychosis and the double instinct. In this work, the Russian author's first two essays are examined, namely: The psychological content of a case of schizophrenia (Dementia Praecox) (1911) and Destruction as the cause of coming into being (1912). This bold exploration of the psychotic world, in fact, permitted Spielrein to propose one of the first and most courageous models of the interpretation of schizophrenia in psychoanalytic terms, and to anticipate, with extraordinary intuition, the concept of the death instinct, starting from the analysis of destructivity, which has a corresponding element in the thought and behavior of psychotics, and which, since birth, is located at the roots of development and coming into being.