Psychobiography Reading Group of the Psychohistory Forum – 15th Meeting
Rediscovering Sabina Spielrein —
Destruction, Creation, and the Birth of Meaning
Saturday, October 25, 2025 (11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST)
Virtual Live
This meeting is free to attend, but RSVP is required.
Please RSVP by using the Registration Form below
At our next (15th) Psychobiography Reading Group, we will enter the charged, complex life of Sabina Spielrein (1885–1942) — a pioneering Russian-Jewish physician and psychoanalyst whose voice was long obscured by the legends surrounding Jung and Freud, yet whose ideas helped shape both. Through a psychohistorical lens, we’ll trace Spielrein’s journey from a gifted, tormented young woman in treatment to a clinician-theorist in her own right, attentive to language, infant development, and the violent/creative dialectic at the core of psychic life.
We will consider how her signature essay, “Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being” (1912), reframed eros and aggression — not as simple opposites but as interwoven forces in love, creativity, and symbol formation. We’ll examine the intimate triangle of correspondences among Spielrein, Jung, and Freud; the ethics of care and boundary crossings; and how gender, culture, and early-20th-century upheavals shaped a woman’s struggle to claim authorship within a movement she helped to build.
Our discussion will follow Spielrein across settings — clinical, theoretical, and pedagogical —and into the tragic terminus of her life in Rostov-on-Don in 1942. We’ll ask how private history and public catastrophe converge in a psyche, and how her rediscovered papers invite us to rethink origins: of object relations, of the death/transformational drive, and of the analyst’s own desire to know.
Please read for this meeting the following articles (by Sabina and others) and excerpts from the books about her:
- H. Zvi Lothane – The Untold Story of Sabina Spielrein — Tap Magazine (10 pp)
- Jewish Women’s Archive – Sabina Spielrein (9 pp)
- Sabina Spielrein (1912). Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being (From The Essential Writings of Sabina Spielrein, Pioneer of Psychoanalysis, 36 pp)
- Sabina Spielrein (1913). Contributions to Understanding a Child’s Mind. (From The Essential Writings of Sabina Spielrein, Pioneer of Psychoanalysis, 20 pp)
- Juhani Ihanus – Reflections on Sabina Spielrein’s Life and Intellectual Legacy Reexamined. Clio’s Psyche, 32(2), 156-162. (6 pp)
Non-mandatory readings:
- Pamela Cooper-White, Felicity Brock Kelcourse, & Adrienne Harris (2019). A comparative timeline: Spielrein, Freud, Jung, and other theorists, including key works and significant events within the history of psychoanalysis (from Sabina Spielrein and the Beginnings of Psychoanalysis, 30pp)
Please note that we choose short readings to ensure that they will be read ahead of time. Individuals who have not done the readings for this group will need to stay muted to establish this as a true discussion group.
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The Psychobiography Research and Publication Group of the Psychohistory Forum created the virtual Psychobiography Reading Groupin 2023. We meet in alternate months, with a summer break, and we work hard to keep it as a serious psychoanalytic approach to psychobiography. Subsequently, our focus will be on classic works of psychodynamic psychobiography, with the bottom-up approach rather than the one coming from explicit underlying theories.
As always, the Group fosters open, respectful dialogue and integrative thinking across disciplines — psychobiography, psychohistory, clinical practice, literature, and the arts. We welcome returning members and newcomers alike. Please plan to complete the assigned materials (under 100 pages) in advance to support a true discussion format.
RSVP is required; confirmation will include Zoom access, with a reminder sent the day before the meeting.
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To learn more about our first eleven meetings of our Psychobiography Reading Group, visit the following webpages:
1st meeting on February 25, 2023: Reading J. Anderson’s Chapter “Winnicott’s Constant Search for the Life that Feels Real.” https://psychohistoryforum.com/announcing-the-psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum/
2nd meeting on April 1, 2023: Reading E. Erikson’s Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence. https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum/
3rd meeting on June 3, 2023: Reading E. Erikson’s Young Man Luther. https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-reading-e-eriksons-young-man-luther-a-study-in-psychoanalysis-and-history/
4th meeting on August 5, 2023: Reading L. Friedman’s Identity’s Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson. https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-4th-meeting/
5th meeting on October 14, 2023: Reading S. Freud’s Leonardo daVinci and a Memory of His Childhood. https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-5th-meeting/
6th meeting on January 13, 2024: Reading “Sigmund Freud” Chapter by Atwood & Stolorow (from their book Faces in a Cloud), and “Freud as Leonardo: Why the First Psychobiography Went Wrong” by Elms. https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-6th-meeting/
7th meeting on March 30, 2024: Reading Winnicott and about Winnicott: https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-7th-meeting/
8th meeting on May 18, 2024: Reading “Otto Rank” Chapter by Atwood & Stolorow (from their book Faces in a Cloud). https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-8th-meeting/
9th meeting on August 3, 2024: Reading “Carl Jung” Chapter by Atwood & Stolorow (from their book Faces in a Cloud). https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-9th-meeting/
10th meeting on October 19, 2024: Psychobiographical readings on and by Melanie Klein. https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-10th-meeting/
11th meeting on January 11, 2025: Psychobiographical readings on and by Wilhelm Reich. https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-11th-meeting/
12th meeting on March 1, 2025: Psychobiographical readings on and by Hanna Segal. https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-12th-meeting/
13th meeting on May 17, 2025: Psychobiographical readings on and by Eric R. Kandel. https://psychohistoryforum.com/psychobiography-reading-group-of-the-psychohistory-forum-13th-meeting/
14th Meeting on August 23, 2025 (11am-1pm EDT): Psychobiography Reading Group Dedicated to Oliver Sacks.
We look forward to deepening our knowledge of this psychohistorical approach together, as we probe the lives of fascinating and important people.
If you are interested in joining this group, even if you cannot attend this meeting, please fill out the RSVP form above. Please feel free to contact Inna Rozentsvit at inna.rozentsvit@gmail.com or Paul H. Elovitz at cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com with any questions or clarifications.
Best regards,
Inna and Paul
Inna Rozentsvit, MD, PhD, Associate Editor of Clio’s Psyche and Director/Convenor of the Psychohistory Forum; Founder of NeuroRecovery Solutions, Inc.; Founder & Editor-in-Chief & ORI Academic Press, MindConsiliums, and MindMend Publishing; Programs Director @ the Object Relations Institute, NYC. E-mail: inna.rozentsvit@gmail.com
Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, Historian, Research Psychoanalyst, Online Psychohistory Professor, Psychohistory Forum Director, and Editor, Clio’s Psyche; Author, The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors (Routledge, 2018); Editor, The Many Roads of the Builders of Psychohistory (ORI Academic Press, 2021); Author/Editor of other books. See CliosPsyche.org for additional information. E-mail: cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com