Maternal Depth Psychology and Somatic Studies

Gone Spielreinian: Maternal Ferality and the Suprahumanities

“Perhaps our field has built a canonical story, as many empires do, upon the disappearance of indigenous people – many, though not all of them, women” (Harris).

Sabina Nikolayevna Spielrein (1885–1942) was a prominent twentieth-century thinker whose transdisciplinary contributions, rooted in biological, relational, and evolutionary perspectives, continue to shape and inform contemporary research and scholarship. Disappearing from the historical record for three decades following the horrifying murder of her and her daughters, enacted by a Nazi firing squad, Spielrein’s writings have been in a long and complex process of retrieval and revival. The scope and breadth of Spielrein’s beneficence, however, have only recently been recognized by scholars of influence. Spielrein is now appropriately acknowledged as the originator of ideas that inspired some of the most well-known concepts and theories in psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. Many of her contributions remain relevant today. Until very recently, however, her ideas were historically attributed to colleagues and acquaintances once privy to her innermost thoughts and extraordinary mind. Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and several other notable thinkers were informed and inspired by Spielrein’s writing, lectures, and psychoanalytic processes. Despite a renewal of Spielreinian inquiry and appreciation, attention to maternal specificity in Spielrein’s work remains lacking, prompting this writing to position Sabina Spielrein’s thinking and theory making as primarily relational, maternal, and belonging to a transdisciplinary field of study that has yet to come into being and coherence in scholarly discourse.

This essay weaves two narratives to explore maternal and evolutionary themes rediscovered in Sabina Spielrein’s work, situating her contributions within an emergent mother centering field of inquiry that strives to evolve beyond androcentric philosophy and matriphobic psychoanalysis. Using a reflexive scholarly personal narrative, I examine gatekeeping, silencing, and the century-long appropriation and disaffirmation of Spielrein’s theories alongside my experiences of marginalization as a developing scholar-practitioner. I argue that the forces obstructing Spielrein’s true legacy extend through and beyond historical misogyny, reflecting a deeper "missing mother" dysfunction that continues to be pervasive in society, especially in elite academic, psychoanalytic, and medical fields. I map Spielrein’s work onto my conception of (r)evolutionary matrisophy, focusing on her maternal biological approach to psychoanalysis, reproduction, death instinct theory, species-psyche theory, somatic expression, and psychic representation in the development of speech and thought. I propose that Spielrein’s legacy informs a biopsychosocial-spiritual field of humanities grounded in the mother-baby dyad and its relational continuum, suggesting this emerging field - which strives to restore the “symbolic order of the mother” to philosophical and religio-historical meaning making, could be known as the suprahumanities (Muraro).

Though comprehensive biographies have been written on Sabina Spielrein, her story has most often been overshadowed by her relationships with Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, reducing her to a patient, a protégé, and supporting character in their narratives. In particular, the myth of Sabina Spielrein and Carl Jung revolves around their complex personal and professional connection, which has been the subject of romanticization, speculation, fantasy, and reinterpretation since her papers and diaries have been rediscovered and translated. The relationship offers a complex case study in the dynamics of power and sexual consent, with broad agreement about a clear power imbalance occurring due to Jung’s dual roles as her doctor and mentor. What I attempt to highlight in this writing are the complexities of mutual agency in psychological consent, drawing attention to Sabina Spielrein’s resistance to androcentric analysis and her engagement in and healing through self-analysis. I foreground her resiliency, and her innate brilliance ever present in a throughline of inspirited collaboration and creative efforts towards human dignity, human potential, maternal nurturance, and relational transformation.