A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein

by John Kerr

Book Overview

"Has all the elements of a juicy novel . . . riveting. . . . Reudite and elegant." -- Newsday NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, Directed by David Cronenberg and starring Keira Knightly, Viggo Mortensen,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679735801
• ISBN13: 9780679735809
• Release Date: August 1994
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 624 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Keira Knightly cover

This book is worth purchasing just to be able to stare at the incredibly beautiful face of Keira Knightly. WoW that face could stop a clock

human, all too human

Isn't it strange that although this well-researched and readable book has been out ten years now, not a single analyst, Jungian or Freudian, has reviewed it here?During my training as a depth psychologist I heard and read a lot about the Freud-Jung relationship, about its shattering on the rocks of politicking and father complexes, and a bit about the unfortunate Sabina Spielrein, one-time patient of Jung. At this point nobody in the field is shocked to hear about the Founding Fathers having sex with their patients, however inappropriate or damaging it may have been (Freud seems to have been a rare exception to this kind of acting out). What's troubling to read in this book is not so much Jung's having an affair with Spielrein--harmful enough all by itself--but the casual brutality in how he handled it: the resumption of it after she had attacked him and asked Freud for help, Jung's lame excuses for dropping her (even telling her at one point that he'd displaced an attraction to Freud's daughter onto Sabina--how nice), the coldness of his self-justification to Sabina's mother when she found out via letter from Emma Jung (basically: no fee was charged, so it wasn't really that bad--but if you wish to discuss it, that'll be ten francs an hour).... The shocking, manipulative sadism of Jung's repeated betrayals of Spielrein might make difficult reading for those who revere him, even granting that they took place before Jung's "confrontation with the unconscious."The book also sheds light on the human background of Jung's theories about the anima. Plenty here for feminist critics.Kerr also makes a convincing case for Freud's affair with his sister-in-law Minna, although this reader is not entirely sold on it (allow me to keep at least one post-doctoral illusion!). The affair matters because of Kerr's claim that Jung and Freud indulged in implied threats of mutual sexual blackmail toward the end of their correspondence (I won't show them yours if you don't show them mine).I can see after reading this book why some of Jung's late letters to Freud alternate between aggression and what seems like paranoia. For six years I ran men's groups and often noticed that clients with a guilty conscience, especially about having had affairs, lived in the constant fear that someone would tell their current partner about it. Some of what Jung wrote to Freud is consistent with a man who knows his lover (Spielrein) has sent a full confession to a friend and colleague (Freud) but does NOT know just how full a confession it was. Jung's chronic uncertainty about what Freud did or did not know must have added tremendous stress to the ongoing battle of wills and egos. But the submergence of the gifted if borderline-prone Spielrein is the real tragedy in this unamusing comedy of errors.This book is not only interesting reading, but a good history of psychoanalysis and its pioneers--very handy for a psychology course. Includes an index, an extensive bibliography, an

In dubious triumph

Perhaps they were victims of their own unconscious. Certainly Freud and Jung were pioneers in dangerous terrain. Has hysteria ever been explicated. They found a key, but it seems to have frozen in the lock. But the portrait here is less than heroic, and is also very important history for anyone trying to debrief oneself on the legacy of psychoanalysis, whose paradigm grip on cultural mindset up to the seventies almost required an intellectual rebirth to escape from. Had one but known the quirky, almost sordid,details of the hyped promotion of a new research tradition one would have been spared a lot of mental spinning wheels. This history is remarkable in many ways, and goes through the details of the emergence of the theories, followed by their ossification after the episodes of the Freud-Jung collision and the hapless but fascinating Speilrein.

A Most Dangerous Method

For a very solid piece of research, the book is a surprisingly easy read and gripping. Beneath the text, the author subtly raises important social questions for our times. Reflected through the personal histories and theories of Freud, Jung, and Spielrein, Kerr reveals both what was novel and liberating in psychoanalysis (the centrality of sexuality) and what was constricting to the three of them (the practical need to be preoccupied with themselves and their various careers). In this, he raises a very contemporary issue: though love remains desired by all, it is deeply problematical in the face of our culture's particular need for self-preservation.