“A sadist is always at the same time a masochist.”

The idea of a connection between the sadistic and masochistic perversions had already been noted by Krafft-Ebing. Freud stresses it as early as the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), treating sadism and masochism as the two faces of a single perversion whose active and passive forms are to be found in variable proportions in the same individual:

‘A sadist is always at the same time a masochist, although the active or the passive aspect of the perversion may be the more strongly developed in him and may represent his predominant sexual activity.’

 ― Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905)


Excerpted from The Language of Psychoanalysis

Carl Jung spanks Sabina Spielrein in Cronenberg's drama, A Dangerous Method (2011)

Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis

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Sabina Spielrein is perhaps best known for her love affair with her doctor, Carl Gustav Jung. Their intense therapeutic relationship led to a mutual fascination that lasted, for Spielrein, for the rest of her life. It is debatable whether Spielrein and Jung’s relationship was consummated, but it did give birth to some of the most important ideas within psychoanalysis and analytical psychology today, the most notable being that of the death instinct. But what happened to Spielrein and why have her story and work remained in the dark for so many years?

This second edition of Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis complements the first edition by retaining many of the most important documents about her life and work. Included in this edition are Jung’s hospital records of his treatment of Spielrein, Jung’s letters to Spielrein following her discharge in 1905, extracts from her personal diary, and her ground breaking paper on the development of language, "The origin of the child’s words Papa and Mama." New material includes Spielrein’s famous paper, "Destruction as a cause of coming into being", in which she formulates her theory of the death drive, a paper describing her place and contribution within Freud’s Vienna Circle, commentaries on the mutual erotic transference between Spielrein and Jung, and a theoretical discussion of her seminal ideas on aggression.

This new edition compiles the essential writings of Spielrein along with commentaries by prominent psychoanalytic and Jungian scholars. It is the definitive source book on Spielrein for clinicians, scholars and historians of psychoanalysis.

See also:

Lou Andreas-Salomé, One of the First Female Psychoanalysts

Karen Horney, a Leading Psychoanalyst and Founder of Feminist Psychology

Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein

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Who was Sabina Spielrein? Her dramatic life story is most famous for her notorious affair with Carl Jung, dramatised in the film A Dangerous Method starring Keira Knightley. Yet she was a woman who overcame family and psychiatric abuse to become an original thinker in the field of psychotherapy. This is the first biography to put her life and ideas at the centre of the story, and to examine Spielreins key role in the development of psychoanalysis and in the rift between Jung and Freud. Drawing on fresh research into Spielreins diaries, papers and correspondence, John Launer tells the story of a passionate woman who transformed herself from one of Jungs disturbed patients into a leading figure in Western psychology, then the Soviet intelligentsia, before losing her life in the Holocaust. At the heart of Sex Versus Survival is the gripping tale of Spielrein and Jungs tumultuous affair, which played such an important role in both of their lives and intellectual journeys. Launer shows how Spielreins overlooked ideas rejected by Jung and Freud, but substantially vindicated by later developments in psychology and evolutionary biology may represent the last and most important stage in the rediscovery of an extraordinary life.