Sabina Spielrein’s, “Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being” – transformation as destruction for creation

INTRODUCTION

This essay analyzes Sabina Spielrein’s most famous work, “Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being” (Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens, 1912) . It envisions her neither as a premature Jungian nor as a dissident Freudian, but as what she truly was: an independent theorist whose dialectic of creation and destruction in transformation occupies the intellectual space between Freud’s metapsychology and Jung’s later psychology of individuation and the collective unconscious. Spielrein, a Russian psychoanalyst, argues that creation and destruction are inseparable. Her core insight is that genuine transformation requires the dissolution of an existing form—a law that applies equally across the biological, philosophical, psychological, and symbolical realms.

Stars are born – Creation and Destruction – a violent process. The Herbig-Haro (HH) object 24 is created, when a newborn proto star expels high-speed gas jets that violently collide with surrounding dust and gas – FITS by HST (via MAST). Almost a symbol. (@cgfallenangel)

Where do we start?

Do we start in Zurich in 1911, where Spielrein’s dissertation, ”On the Psychological Content of a Case of Schizophrenia (Dementia Praecox),“ became the very first psychoanalytically oriented doctoral thesis written by a woman ? A pioneering achievement in the field of psychosis research, her work left Professor Bleuler, Jung, and Freud equally enthusiastic, and it was immediately published in the renowned Yearbook for Psychoanalytic and Psychopathological Research .

Or do we start in Rostov-on-Don, where she was born in 1885 into a wealthy family, only for her life to end there in 1942—forgotten in the West, impoverished, and stripped of the permission to practice her profession, ground down by history with her three brothers executed during Stalin’s Great Terror, and she and her daughters ultimately murdered by the German SS ?

For me, the story surrounding “Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being” begins on the evening of November 29, 1911, when she presented several excerpts from her new work to Freud and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (WPV) . By this time, the friendship between Freud and Jung already showed deep cracks—as had the personal relationship between Sabina Spielrein and C.G. Jung . Among her Viennese colleagues, Spielrein’s presentation was met with massive resistance . Freud himself was not yet ready to entertain her ideas; it was not until his 1920 essay, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” that he would finally acknowledge Spielrein’s work—relegating it to a mere footnote.

Sabina Spielrein did not leave Jung in Zurich voluntarily, but rather tore herself away in a violent confrontation of reality and love. She traveled to Munich to complete her new work and study art history. Although she enjoyed Munich’s culture and people, it was merely a stopover; she had successfully insisted to her parents that she remain in the West. A lively correspondence maintained the connection between Munich and Zurich. Physically separated from Jung, Sabina now sought an inner detachment through her new scientific work, “Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being”. She tested her hypotheses against biological facts, individual psychological considerations, and child psychology, citing examples from literature and philosophy while drawing on material from European myths and dreams. She referenced the philosophers Ernst Mach and Friedrich Nietzsche—particularly his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra—as well as Richard Wagner’s heroic model in Das Rheingold and the psychoanalytic writings of Jung and her doctoral supervisor, Bleuler.

Spielrein left Munich and arrived in Vienna in October 1911. On October 11, one of her two great wishes came true: on the merits of her dissertation, she was elected as a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Meanwhile, the intense friendship between Jung and Freud had begun to fracture.

It is well known that Sabina Spielrein was a student of Jung’s—a fact she made no secret of. For the majority of her Viennese colleagues, this position was anything but popular. The fact that Sabina Spielrein—through her new work—distanced herself from Freud in a manner that was diplomatic yet clear did not strengthen her position; many passages begin with “Freud is right about…” followed by a major “but” or “however”. For instance, Freud viewed the reproductive/sexual drive as purely a pleasure-seeking, life-affirming force (Eros). Spielrein boldly countered that in the case of incest, the sexual instinct inherently contains a destructive impulse (“der im Fortpflanzungstrieb enthaltene Destruktionsdrang”) .

Sabina Spielrein’s November 29 entry presentation to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, bearing the working title “Über Transformation,” was a preview of her finalized 1912 paper, “Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens”. Her work seems inherently more Jungian than Freudian, yet at the crucial points, she is neither Jung nor Freud—she is Sabina Spielrein.

Jung reacted to the manuscript with palpable enthusiasm, writing to Spielrein, “I am surprised by the wealth of excellent thoughts that anticipate various ideas of mine” . However, Jung wrote very differently to Freud about the manuscript; both referred to her derogatorily in their letter exchanges as “Die Kleine” (4 J287/F286) .

It is worth noting that, at this time, Jung was working with Toni Wolff on Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (revised as Symbole der Wandlung from the fourth edition onward), which was published in 1912, almost at the same time as Spielrein’s paper.

While Wandlung and Transformation are often used interchangeably as synonyms for “change,” they have distinctly different nuances in German. In the German language, Wandlung denotes a deep, organic, and spiritual metamorphosis—an internal maturing process and progressive evolution of character, much like Jung’s individuation, to discover the Self . Here, the inflated ego is put in its place within a polypsychic personality, not dissolved.

Conversely, Transformation specifies a radical, structured, and large-scale disruption in form, function, or systemic organization. By intentionally prioritizing Transformation as her main theme, Spielrein signals that psychological change is not a linear development, but a cyclic reconfiguration where the old must be given up for the new to emerge. She explicitly embraces Jung’s polypsychic theory of personality, noting that “according to him we have in us not an undivided ‘I’ but various complexes, which contend (streiten) for priority,” while her chosen term dividuum (meaning “divisible”) is to be understood as the antonym of “individuum” (indivisible), describing an entity that is inherently an interconnected multiplicity. Both this conceptual synthesis and her working and final titles clearly point to her dialectic view of transformation.

SPIELREINS SEMANTIC AND TERMINOLOGY

Sabina Spielrein is writing her paper precisely at the moment Freud and Jung are breaking apart (1911–1912), and she uses Freudian-Plus vocabulary to validate Jung’s discoveries. When she invents these hybrid terms, she is trying to bridge the gap of the two schools. Here is a proposed direct translation of some “semi-Freudian” terms into clear Jungian school terminology.

Below are some examples of these hybrid terms:

“I-Psyche” (Ichpsyche): In Jungian terms, this corresponds to the Ego-Complex or the Personal Psyche. The Ichpsyche constitutes the layer of the mind tied directly to conscious identity, individuality, and personal survival.

“Type-Image” (Typusbild): In terms Jungian later coined, these may be interpreted as Archetypal Images. Spielrein deployed the term “type” (Typus) in its classic etymological sense: a prototype, mold, or universal blueprint. A type-image belongs to the collective, impersonal inheritance of humanity rather than to the individual biographical experience.

Usage example: If a patient is traumatized by their own sexuality, their I-psyche feels personal shame. To protect itself, the mind dissolves the personal “I-image” (the ego) and replaces it with a “type-image.” Instead of saying “I am dirty from sex,” the patient says, “The Earth has been fouled with urine.” The personal shame is inflated into a universal, mythic, or cosmic “type” (The Earth Mother / Cosmic defilement).

The Antagonistic Streams: I-Psyche vs. Type-Psyche:

Spielrein introduced the radical premise that the human psyche is permanently torn between two opposing dynamics or “streams”). Although those were not referred in Freudian terms as drive or instinct, this structural polarity indirectly anticipated Freud’s dualistic framework in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) and touched what Jung later designated as psychological compensation)

The I-Psyche Stream (Personal / Ego)	The Type-Psyche Stream
Goal: Individual preservation and personal pleasure.	Goal: Species preservation, continuity, and transformation.
Focus: The “Me” (The unique, isolated individual).	Focus: The “We” (The eternal, collective human experience).
Stance on Pain: Avoids it at all costs to protect the Ego.	Stance on Pain: Welcomes it if it forces growth or change.

This structural tension answers a foundational clinical question that perplexed early psychoanalysis: why do patients suffering from psychosis (historically classified as dementia praecox or schizophrenia) deliberately sabotage their own lives or experience a paradoxical “joy in pain”?

From the I-psyche perspective, this makes no sense because the Ego only wants pleasure. But from the Type-psyche perspective, the individual ego is completely insignificant—it is just a “momentary grouping of feelings.” The Type-psyche will readily override, damage, or dissolve the Ego if it means forcing the individual back into alignment with the transpersonal (“We”).

“The Ego-complex always seeks personal comfort. However, deep within the Collective Unconscious, there are powerful Archetypal forces (the ‘We’) that do not care about the Ego’s comfort. When these autonomous complexes erupt, they dissolve the personal Ego-boundaries shifting the individual’s crisis into a collective, mythological drama.”

This passage anticipates several structural features that Jung would later organize under the concept of the Collective Unconscious. Spielrein’s “We” bears a resemblance to later Jungian formulations of transpersonal psychic layers.

Sabina Spielrein manually engineered these German compound terms (Ichpsyche, Ichleben, Typusbild) to solve a massive political and theoretical dilemma. She wrote:

“I believe that Freud is right, when he accepts striving after the attainment of pleasure… as the basis of all psychic productions.””Now, however, the question is whether our whole psychic life consists of this I-life…”

At this point in history (1911), Jung had not yet fully formulated the term “Collective Unconscious” or “Archetype” in print. He was dropping hints in lectures and letters, but the official nomenclature did not exist yet. Spielrein had to invent a language to describe what she and Jung were discovering in schizophrenia patients at the Burghölzli clinic. She explicitly coins:

Ichpsyche (I-Psyche) & Ichleben (I-life): She takes Freud’s Ich (Ego) and anchors it down. By compounding it into “I-life,” she restricts Freud’s entire pleasure-principle theory to the mere daily, personal maintenance of the individual identity.

Typus-Bilder (Type-images) & Das “Wir” (The “We”): Since the word “Archetype” wasn’t canonized yet, she used Typus (from the Greek typos, meaning “impression,” “mold,” or “pattern”). Typus-Bilder can often be translated into later Jungian language as archetypal images. She explicitly states: “The depth of our psyche knows no ‘I,’ but only its summation, the ‘We’.” Spielrein’s concept of the “We” should not be equated directly with Jung’s later Collective Unconscious. Rather, it designates a transpersonal layer of psychic and biological life that precedes the differentiated ego. Depending on context, this layer appears as species-life, ancestral inheritance, symbolic origin, maternal matrix, or collective humanity. The ambiguity may reflect not confusion but the fact that Spielrein was attempting to describe a phenomenon that Jung himself had not yet fully conceptualized.

SPIELREIN AND FREUD

“Ueber Transformation”

Her paper starts with a lengthy Jung quote about the two sides of libido. A preview excerpt of her paper was presented under the working title “Über Transformation”. Both is highly significant. By explaining schizophrenia (dementia praecox) through transformation rather than mere Freudian “regression” or “fixation,” she argues very similar as Jung.

Freud viewed schizophrenia as a catastrophic failure where the Ego withdraws its libido from the world and regresses into primary narcissism. To Spielrein (and Jung), the patient is speaking the language of a cosmic, mythological sacrificial ritual. The pain of the individual is being dissolved into an objective fact of nature.

Conflict or Transformation?

In Freud’s mature metapsychology, especially after Sigmund Freud introduced the death drive (Todestrieb) in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), psychic life is structured around a tension between two fundamentally opposed classes of drives:

Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being

Eros (life drives): preservation, union, sexuality, creation.
Death drive: dissolution, reduction of tension, return to an inorganic state.

This is fundamentally a dualistic conflict model.

By contrast, in Sabina Spielrein’s 1912 essay Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being, destruction is not primarily an opposing force to life. Rather, destruction is an intrinsic moment within transformation and generation itself. Her argument is often summarized as:

Becoming requires the dissolution of what already exists.

Unlike Freud’s later dual-drive theory, Spielrein does not primarily conceive psychic life as a conflict between antagonistic instincts. Rather, she understands destruction and creation as complementary moments within a single process of transformation and becoming. The reproductive act itself, for example, involves the loss of individual form in the service of creating something new. This is closer to a dialectic of transformation than to Freud’s later opposition between life and death instincts.

The pleasure principle (Ichpsyche) cannot explain why humans voluntarily seek experiences that dismantle their own ego boundaries. Spielrein’s language often conveys an impulsion, urge, or dynamic tendency rather than instinctual system as she used Drang translated ‘impulse’ instead drive or instinct. Her identification of a stream that “wants this self-damaging” and “takes pleasure in pain,” was interpreted by many, especially the Freudian, as the Destruction Drive (Destruktionstrieb). Freud initially resisted her idea. But nearly a decade later, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud finally admitted she was right and introduced his own famous concept of the Death Drive (Thanatos), citing her in a footnote.

It seems arguable that Spielrein’s term Destruction Impulse (Drang) should not be reworded as Destruction Drive. Her paper reads like a masterclass in diplomacy, but conceptually, she is pulling the rug right out from under Freud, by saying “Freud is right that everything is driven by the pleasure of the individual”, but immediately follows it with a massive “however” that completely shatters his deterministic view of the mind. She expands the map of the mind, implicating that beneath Freud’s puddle of an individual ego desperately managing personal repressions lies a massive, ancient ocean of the human experience that operates on completely different laws. Spielrein looks past the individual puddle and looks at biological, philosophical and psychological realms. For her:

Destruction is a prerequisite for creation. Freud saw destruction as a neurosis or a failure of the ego. Spielrein argued that the Artpsyche demands the temporary dissolution of the ego because that is the only way a human can love, reproduce, or create art.

Spielrein’s concept of destruction presupposes a dividual rather than an individual psyche. Drawing on Jung’s theory of complexes, she conceives personality as a multiplicity of semi-autonomous psychic complexes whose continual reconfiguration requires the dissolution of existing forms. Destruction therefore functions, in modern terms, not as an instinct opposed to life but as a transformative process within a fundamentally polypsychic system. Destruction therefore functions not as an instinct opposed to life but as a transformative process within a fundamentally polypsychic system.Modern polypsychic interpretations find strong antecedents in Spielrein’s conception of the psyche as a multiplicity of interacting complexes rather than a unitary ego.

Freud’s metapsychology certainly contains internal plurality—the unconscious, ego, id, superego, conflicting wishes, and so on. But Freud generally seeks to explain psychic life through dynamic conflicts among drives and agencies. Spielrein’s emphasis increasingly falls on the transformation of configurations within a psyche that is already intrinsically multiple.

She became not a bridge between two great men as she had wished nor is she proto-Jung. She is Spielrein. She stood entirely on her own ground, utilizing Jung’s concepts at that time and her clinical experience to present a completely unique cyclic view of human transformation. In Spielrein and early Jung, the psyche is better understood as a dynamic, self-organizing system of interacting complexes rather than a unitary ego defending itself against instinctual pressures. Psychic life is therefore not primarily structured by conflict between rational control and dark drives, but by continuous emergent reconfiguration within a distributed, polypsychic field.

Spielrein’s cultural-intellectual background

Many scholars have noted that Spielrein’s thought resonates with currents in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian philosophy and science. Whether there was direct influence in every case is harder to prove, but the parallels are striking.

She developed her thoughts within a cultural-intellectual background in which processual, transformative, and non-substantialist models of life, psyche, and creativity were already intelligible and philosophically resonant. Within that milieu, the three intellectuals were named by Sabine Richebächer who function well as representative poles of resonance, not sources in a strict genealogical sense:

Vladimir Solovyov → metaphysical holism (unity-through-transformation)
Vyacheslav Ivanov → symbolic-ritual dynamics of dissolution and rebirth
Ilya Mechnikov → biological self-regulation through constructive destruction

Together, they map a conceptual field in which:

being is not static substance but ongoing becoming
destruction is not pure negation but functional or generative transition
identity is not absolute but relational and processual

Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900)

Solovyov was perhaps the most influential Russian religious philosopher of the period.

His doctrine of all-unity (vseedinstvo) held that reality is constituted through the reconciliation of differences within a larger whole.

This bears a notable resemblance to Spielrein’s idea that:

individuality must partly surrender itself,
separation gives way to union,
destruction becomes a condition for higher forms of existence.

Solovyov frequently presents death, sacrifice, and self-transcendence not merely as negations but as moments in a movement toward fuller realization. Thus, Spielrein’s notion that annihilation can be productive fits remarkably well with Solovyov’s metaphysical framework.

Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949)

Ivanov is perhaps even closer to Spielrein in spirit.A major figure in Russian Symbolism, he was heavily influenced by: Nietzsche, Greek tragedy, Dionysian religion,mystical transformation. For Ivanov, genuine creation requires: dissolution of the isolated self, ecstatic participation in something larger, death and rebirth as recurring patterns of culture and psyche. His Dionysian philosophy repeatedly portrays destruction as creative. A recurring theme is:

The individual must die to be reborn at a higher level.

This does not necessarily mean physical death; it refers to the breakdown of existing forms, identities, and structures so that new forms can emerge. That idea is extremely close to Spielrein’s conception of psychic and biological transformation. Both thinkers reject a simple opposition between life and death. Instead, death-like processes become moments within life itself.

Ilya Mechnikov (1845–1916)

Mechnikov is the most scientifically relevant comparison.Known for discovering phagocytosis and helping found immunology, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1908.

What is especially interesting is his biological view that: life depends upon processes of destruction, cells destroy other cells, organisms constantly renew themselves through breakdown and reconstruction. The immune system itself functions through controlled destruction.

Mechnikov therefore offered a biological picture in which: death serves life, elimination serves reservation, destruction enables development.

This resembles Spielrein’s argument more closely than Freud’s later death drive. For Freud, destruction points toward a tendency to return to an inorganic state. For Mechnikov and Spielrein, destructive processes are integrated into the ongoing production and maintenance of life. Many historians see this as a crucial distinction.

THE DIVIDUUM: SPIELREINS’s POLYPSYCHIC PERSONALITY

The ocean was largely defined by their work at the Burghölzli Asylum. Both Jung and Spielrein were trying to understand the fragmented, highly symbolic, and fluid language of psychotic patients.

They both realized that Freud’s “puddle” (individual repressions and childhood neuroses) was inadequate to explain why a schizophrenic patient would suddenly speak in grand, cosmic, mythological symbols.

They were both forced to look deeper into the collective and cultural history of the human experience to find answers. Even though they swam in the same ocean, they eventually swam in different directions:

Jung charted the ocean by mapping it—building a structured taxonomy of archetypes and creating a map with a clear destination (Individuation).

Spielrein remained focused on the fluid dynamic of the water itself—the constant, cyclical currents of Rückverwandlung and Werden, where nothing stays fixed and the cycle never truly end.

Its Jung’s ocean. Either she swims to a different island or they are swimming side by side. We will never know. Jung definitely reached his island. All we can do, is letting Spielrein speak:

For me the name of Jung is intimately connected with the name of Mach, for it is this researcher as well, who thinks of the mind as consisting of many individuals. It is indeed Jung who speaks of the complex-autonomy [Komplex-autonomie], so that according to him we have in us not an undivided I but various complexes, which contend [streiten] for priority. The most beautiful confirmation of his views is provided by the dementia-praecox patients, who so strongly feel the power of individual complexes separated from the I.

I had to reach the insight that the principal characteristic of the individual consists in the fact that it is a dividuum [Dividuum]. The closer we get to conscious thinking, the more differentiated become our mental images; the deeper we reach into the unconscious, the more general, more typical become the images. The depth of our psyche knows no “I,” but only its summation, the “We” [das “Wir”];9 or the present “I” becomes, seen as object, subordinate to other similar objects

Spielrein is not merely borrowing from Jung—she is explicitly telling you what she believes she has learned from him, and then she pushes it a step further. Sabina Spielrein’s concept of the “dividuum” argues that the psyche is not a unitary entity, but rather fundamentally composed of multiple, conflicting parts. In her 1912 work, she moves beyond Jung’s theory of autonomous complexes, framing the individual’s core characteristic as a “divisible” entity (a dividuum) rather than an indivisible one Spielrein argues that the “I” a return to the deeper ground,” anticipating a transpersonal psychology while focusing more on the ego’s return to this deeper ground than the mature Jung, who sought to maintain ego differentiation.

Jung’s Discovery autonomous complexes

By 1911, Carl Jung had already developed his groundbreaking theory of autonomous complexes through his word association experiments and dementia praecox studies at the Burghölzli clinic. His framework explicitly states that we have in us not an undivided “I” but various complexes, which contend for priority. This insight proves that the human psyche is not a unitary entity and the conscious ego is not sovereign. Instead, these complexes possess a relative autonomy within the mind. In cases of schizophrenia, this autonomy becomes highly visible because the complexes detach so dramatically from the central personality. As a result of this detachment, the patient experiences these split-off parts as independent, vital, and hostile alien beings.

Clinical Confirmation Schizophrenia as mind’s underlying structure

With this foundational framework established, the focus shifts to the clinical proof that validates the theory. Schizophrenia does not merely serve as a description of pathology, but rather as definitive evidence of the mind’s underlying structure. The disease acts as a unique window, revealing a fragmented architecture that normally remains completely hidden in a healthy person. This reflects a major theoretical move where the pathological state is utilized to expose the universal architecture of the normal psyche. The most beautiful confirmation of these views is provided by dementia-praecox patients, who vividly experience the independent power of individual complexes that have separated from the ego.

Spielrein’s Own Conclusion principal characteristic of the individual it is a dividuum”

From this clinical confirmation, Sabina Spielrein makes an original theoretical leap to her own definitive conclusion. She explicitly declares her thesis statement: “I had to reach the insight that the principal characteristic of the individual consists in the fact that it is a dividuum”. This proposition belongs entirely to Spielrein, moving far beyond a mere footnote to Jung’s work. Her core argument is that multiplicity is not just a feature of the mind, but the defining characteristic of human identity itself.

By choosing the Latin term dividuum, she delivers a radical philosophical attack on the traditional metaphysical assumption of psychic unity. While the word individual historically means “that which cannot be divided,” Spielrein asserts that, psychologically speaking, this assumption is false. The human being is precisely that which is divided. A person is not an indivisible unit that merely contains internal parts; rather, the person is fundamentally composed of parts from the very beginning.

The emergence of the “We”

The text outlines a strict, coherent progression as the psyche descends deeper into the unconscious, moving precisely from the local Ego (“I”), through the autonomous Complexes, into the divided structure of the Dividuum, toward Typical images, and finally to the emergence of the “We”. To map this descent, Spielrein deliberately constructs two sets of compound terms.

First, she creates Ichpsyche (I-Psyche) and Ichleben (I-life). By taking Freud’s Ich (Ego) and anchoring it down into “I-life,” she restricts Freud’s entire pleasure-principle theory to the mere daily, personal maintenance of individual identity.

Second, she introduces Typus-Bilder (Type-images) and Das “Wir” (The “We”). Because the word “Archetype” was not yet canonized in 1912, she utilized Typus (from the Greek typos, meaning an impression, mold, or pattern). Consequently, these Typus-Bilder can often be translated into later Jungian language as archetypal images. She explicitly states, “The depth of our psyche knows no ‘I,’ but only its summation, the ‘We'”.

As consciousness deepens, individuality decreases, typicality increases, and collective patterns emerge. However, Spielrein’s concept of the “We” should not be equated directly with Jung’s later Collective Unconscious. Rather, it designates a transpersonal layer of psychic and biological life that precedes the differentiated ego. Depending on the context, this layer appears simultaneously as species-life, ancestral inheritance, symbolic origin, the maternal matrix, or collective humanity. This ambiguity reflects the fact that Spielrein was attempting to describe a pioneering phenomenon that Jung himself had not yet fully conceptualized or differentiated in print.

At this specific historical crossroads, Sabina Spielrein’s relationship to Carl Jung reveals that she is not merely anticipating his later work, but is actually presenting a more radical vision than the mature Jung would ever accept. This divergence centers entirely on the ultimate fate of the individual identity.

For the mature Jung later, the psychological journey is defined by two very different movements:

Individuation: The process where the ego enters into a conscious relationship with transpersonal realities while remaining highly differentiated. Jung never wanted the ego to disappear; he only wanted it relativized.

Collective Possession: A dangerous state where the ego is entirely dissolved, overrun, and consumed by collective forces. This second movement is the precise pathology Jung later warned against in his Wotan essay, where archetypal inflation leads to mass ideological possession.

Spielrein, however, is at that time far more radical as Jung will ever be. While Jung never abandons the absolute importance of differentiation, Spielrein is far more attracted to the concept of dreturn to the deeper ground. For her, genuine transformation hints a longing for return—the voluntary return to the deeper ground of the differentiated ego.

Her core insight emphasizes that what appears destructive to the conscious mind is not necessarily pathological; rather, destruction is the absolute precondition for creation. The old self must partially die for a new self to emerge. Whenever the ego identifies itself with a particular form, role, belief, or image, psychological development eventually demands that this identification be sacrificed. What the ego experiences as terrifying loss and destruction, the deeper personality experiences as growth.

While Jung viewed the complete immersion of the ego into the collective psyche as a dangerous inflation to be avoided, Spielrein embraces this as a general law of life. She recognizes that transformation naturally threatens the existing form, causing an intense fear of change within the Ichpsyche. Yet, she insists that every major development of personality requires a total sacrifice of identity. To Spielrein, becoming requires letting go of what one has been, meaning the individual must be willing to let the differentiated “I” dissolve back into the universal maternal matrix of the “We” to achieve a more comprehensive form of life.

Spielrein repeatedly follows a symbolic expansion process in which a personal image gradually reveals transpersonal meanings.

The progression is not imposed by the interpreter; she herself walks the reader through it.

Stage 1 — The Personal Mother

The witch-story example begins with ordinary developmental psychology.

the girl identifies with her mother
the witch represents the mother
the emotional charge comes from the mother’s life

At this level we remain entirely within a personal-biographical framework.

The mother is still my mother.

Stage 2 — Mother as Symbolic Form

The moment Spielrein moves to Goethe’s “Mothers” and Silberer’s sea-image, something changes. Now the mother is no longer a particular woman.The sea becomes maternal, life-generating primordial. The symbol is already expanding beyond biography.

Stage 3 — Mother as Origin

Then comes the remarkable step:

“the maternal, creating water, from which all life has come into being. Now we have crossed into cosmological language.

The mother is becoming source,origin beginning. The symbol is no longer primarily psychological. It is ontological. Spielrein is asking where forms come from.

Stage 4 — Mother as the Undifferentiated

This may be the conceptual center of the sequence. The sea-mother is described as outside time, outside place, beyond opposites, before differentiation That is a very specific description. The important term is not “mother.” The important term is: undifferentiated state. The mother image is functioning as a symbolic representation of pre-differentiated existence. This is where transformation enters. Because for Spielrein every differentiated form secretly longs to return to its origin. Not to disappear absolutely. But to undergo reconfiguration.

Stage 5 — Mother as Transformative Matrix

Now the symbol acquires dynamism. The sea is not merely origin. It is also the place from which new forms emerge. This is why she immediately links it to transformation (Verwandlung).

The movement becomes: emergence differentiated forms arise →differentiated forms become unstable →differentiated forms partially return to origin →new forms emerge

Stage 6 — Toward the “We”

Only after all these expansions does the the “We” become intelligible. The “We” is not introduced from nowhere. The groundwork has already been laid. Seen this way, the “We” is not simply collective humanity. Nor is it yet Jung’s later collective unconscious. It is the level of reality at which individual differentiation has not yet fully occurred. That is why Spielrein can speak of type-life, unconscious life symbolic life. maternal life almost interchangeably. She is still describing one phenomenon through several overlapping vocabularies. Through what symbolic expansions does she arrive at the We?

Jung’s later archetypal theory can be understood as one attempt to conceptualize systematically the type of symbolic expansion that Spielrein is already tracing here. To Sabrina Spielrein’s “We” at the time of writing is not one thing. It is a deliberately broad term for the deeper level of life from which individual identity emerges. That deeper level appears simultaneously as type, unconscious, ancestral inheritance, symbolic origin, maternal source, collective humanity.

In other words, she has identified a phenomenon before she has fully differentiated its components. That would actually be very typical of pioneering work. She knows there is a deeper layer, it is not the ego, it operates according to different laws, it speaks through symbols.

But she has not yet separated: biology, collective psychology, archetypal structure, mythic imagery, with the precision that Jung would later attempt.

This may be one of the most revealing paragraphs in the entire essay. Not because it proves a later Jungian doctrine, but because it exposes the underlying metaphysical structure of Spielrein’s thought.

The differentiated mother = patient transforms herself into this prime mother. Not for nothing have Greek philosophers, as, e.g., Anaxagoras, sought the origin of world-weariness [Welt-schmerz] in the differentiation of beings [Seienden] from the primary elements. This pain consists precisely in the fact that each particle of our being longs for the back-transformation [Rückverwandlung] in its origins, from which then new becoming [Werden] comes forth.”

For Spielrein, the pain of existence originates not primarily in repression but in differentiation itself. Every differentiated form experiences a tension between its separate existence and its participation in a deeper originating ground. Transformation becomes possible only through a Rückverwandlung—a return-transformation to that source from which new becoming can emerge. It is one of the places where Spielrein stops talking like a clinician and starts talking like a philosopher of becoming. The entire essay may be read as an attempt to understand why life repeatedly sacrifices its existing forms in order to generate new ones. The biological examples, the psychological examples, the mother symbolism, and eventually the “We” all seem to orbit that central question.Why Anaxagoras may not be accidental.

Most readers focus on the sentence about world-weariness (Weltschmerz). But the choice of philosopher matters. Anaxagoras is associated with primordial mixture ,differentiation of things from an original state , Nous as ordering principle.Spielrein does not discuss Nous here.

However, she does discuss original undifferentiated states, differentiation return , emergence of new forms which overlaps strongly with Presocratic cosmology. She is clearly thinking beyond individual psychology and borrowing cosmological language to describe psychic processes.

However, Spielrein seems to be discovering, almost in real time, that the problem of transformation cannot be explained solely by personal biography. The symbols keep expanding outward—from mother, to sea, to earth, to origin, to timeless unconscious. Whether one ultimately reads that through Freud, Jung, philosophy, mythology, or religion, the text itself is already pushing beyond a purely personal psychology.

Spielrein describes psychic life through a cyclical model. Thats nonlinear time, profoundly Asian. Not Western Christian “AD”or Marxist of “Permanent Progress. Panspermia as it is known today, however, is not identical to Anaxagoras original theory. The name, as applied to this theory, was only first coined in 1908. We are in early cosmology I think you’re touching on a place where a strictly Jungian reading may actually become too narrow:

The sequence:

Mother → Sea → Origin → Undifferentiated State → Source of Transformation → We

is beginning to look less like psychoanalysis and more like cosmology. The clue is “Werden”. Modern readers often focus on destruction death drive sexuality ego. But the word that appears again and again is Werden (becoming) an almost a metaphysical category. The question becomes What is the source from which new forms emerge? That is not merely a Freudian question. It is an ancient cosmological question.Spielrein writes:

each particle of our being longs for the back-transformation (Rückverwandlung) into its origins, from which new becoming comes forth.

That is not linear progress. It is cyclical emergence. And, this feels much closer to Presocratic cosmology Indian thought certain Gnostic motifs , Jung was interest at that time and later Jungian transformation symbolism than to nineteenth-century European progress narratives. Spielrein’s concept of the “We” should not be understood merely as an early version of Jung’s collective unconscious. In the text it functions as a broader principle of origin. Through a sequence of symbolic expansions—mother, sea, earth, origin, undifferentiated state—the psyche is traced back toward a transpersonal source from which differentiated life emerges and to which it periodically returns. The “We” therefore denotes not only collective psychology but a deeper principle of becoming that is simultaneously biological, symbolic, and cosmological.

That is surprisingly close to how a modern system theorist might describe movement between attractors in a complex adaptive system.Of course Spielrein knew none of that mathematics. But conceptually she is not thinking in straight lines. She is thinking in cycles, transformations, dissolutions, and re-formations. That is why the essay often feels closer to a process cosmology than to a conventional clinical paper. Spielrein explicitly invokes Anaxagoras at a crucial point, and the conceptual structure surrounding that citation resonates with themes historically associated with Anaxagorean cosmology. What is important here is that Anaxagoras appears precisely where Spielrein is wrestling with differentiation. She writes:

the origin of world-weariness lies in the differentiation of beings from the primary elements

This is where Nietzsche becomes interesting. Nietzsche himself was fascinated by exactly this problem:

How does form emerge from an underlying multiplicity?

The comparison becomes even more interesting when you remember that Spielrein is simultaneously developing, here autonomous complexes, dividuum, dissolution of the unitary ego, emergence of higher forms through destruction. The point about nous is particularly intriguing in classical Anaxagoras:

everything is originally mixed
differentiation occurs
nous initiates ordering

In Spielrein:

psyche tends toward undifferentiated origin
differentiated forms dissolve
new forms emerge

The systems are obviously not identical. But they share a common concern:

How does ordered form arise from a deeper, more fundamental state?
Why does destruction generate form?

That is simultaneously:

a biological question,
a psychological question,
an artistic question,
and arguably a cosmological question.

The artist destroys an existing form and creates another.The psyche relinquishes one identity and produces another. Life dissolves one generation and produces another. The same pattern recurs.

But one unresolved question remains:

What causes new form to emerge from that ground?

For Jung, later, that answer increasingly becomes the Self. For Anaxagoras, it is Nous. For Nietzsche, creative becoming itself often occupies that role. For Spielrein in 1912, the answer is not yet obvious.

Her Answer is the cycle:

undifferentiated state
differentiation
suffering
return
new becoming
Rückverwandlung
Werden

is actually faithful to the text because it preserves two things most interpretations lose:

cyclicality (not teleology)
regeneration (not annihilation)

If “destruction” only meant loss, Freud dominates the reading.

If “destruction” is a phase in regeneration, then Spielrein is already operating in a transformation-theory framework rather than a pathology-theory framework

Spielrein’s essay describes psychic life as a cyclical transformation system in which differentiation generates instability, instability triggers partial de-differentiation, and de-differentiation functions as a regenerative return to a pre-individual substrate from which new differentiated forms emerge.

The cycle (clean structural form)

Destruction → new becoming → Rückverwandlung → Werden can be made more precise in dynamical terms as:

Stage 1 Equilibrium disruption

Destruction (Zerstörung / Untergang)

breakdown of stable ego-configuration
loss of prior identity equilibrium
increase in internal tension between complexes

This is not “annihilation” but destabilization of a metastable structure.

Stage 2 Emergent reconfiguration (unstable multiplicity)

“New becoming” (Werden-in-process)

system does not return to prior state
instead enters a high-variance, loosely coordinated state
multiple tendencies (complexes) compete without stable hierarchy

This is crucial: it is not yet “new order,” but plasticity under reduced constraint.

Stage 3 Back-transformation (Rückverwandlung)

This is the most conceptually dense step. It is not simply “return.” It functions more like:

re-integration of differentiated elements into a new organizing principle

So it is:

not regression
not restoration of prior state
but re-binding of multiplicity into a new coherent configuration

In modern structural language: a re-attraction into a new basin of stability

Stage 4 Stabilized new form (Werden)

Werden (becoming as outcome-state)

a new equilibrium emerges
but it is not identical to the original
it preserves traces of prior fragmentation

So the “identity” that emerges is:

structurally derived from transformation history, not pre-given essence

Spielrein conceptualizes psychic life as a cyclical process in which destabilization of an existing ego-configuration leads to a phase of unstructured multiplicity, followed by a re-binding of psychic elements (Rückverwandlung) into a new stabilized form (Werden), such that transformation is understood not as linear development but as recurrent reorganization of a divided psychic system.

What selects the new equilibrium (Werden) rather than any other possible configuration?

That is where Jung later introduces stronger organizing principles—and where Spielrein remains deliberately open:

Stable psychic configuration (ego-dominant organization)
Destruction / destabilization of form
Emergence of distributed subsystem activity (dividuum state)
Rückverwandlung (re-binding operator)
New stabilized configuration (Werden)
Metamorphosis marker: discontinuous identity shift with preserved material continuity (butterfly)

The butterfly should is here a biological exemplum for non-linear reorganization of structured multiplicity not a symbol of transcendence or archetype .

At this stage, one reading is converging on something quite coherent. Spielrein is effectively describing identity as a temporally structured reconfiguration process of partially autonomous components, where “form” is not preserved but iterative reconstructed to a new equilibrium if a new attractor arises:

Recurrent reconfiguration of psychic multiplicity of semi-autonomous psychic elements into metastable equilibria.

or tighter:

Recurrent reconfiguration of psychic multiplicity into new equilibria.
Recurrent reconfiguration of psychic multiplicity into new states.

That first version preserves the key technical triad:

recurrence (cycle)
multiplicity (dividuum / complexes)
metastable equilibrium (temporary stability, not final order)

That second version is actually very close to how dynamical systems people would informally speak when they don’t want to over-formalize. In this kind of model, “new” is not just qualitative novelty. It encodes:

a changed attractor basin
a reweighted configuration of internal relations
a different stability profile, even if not named

An aesthetic instinct is doing real work here, but it is slightly “compressing away” the constraint language that makes the model precise. What stands out most is that two independent lines of inquiry are beginning to converge:

The Dividuum line: complex autonomy schizophrenia →multiplicity of psyche →dissolution of ego-centrality →emergence of the We
The Mother / Transformation line: mother→sea→origin→undifferentiated state →Rückverwandlung→Werden

At first glance they look like different arguments.But increasingly they appear to be answering the same question: How can new psychic form emerge from an underlying multiplicity?

The “We” and the “Dividuum” may not be separate discoveries. They may be opposite perspectives on the same phenomenon.

Seen from above the psyche is many. That is the Dividuum.

Seen from below the many participate in a deeper common ground. That is the We.

In other words:

Dividuum describes differentiation.
We describes the underlying field from which differentiation emerges.

CONCLUSION

Spielrein developed here concepts based on what she learned in Zurich and Burghölzli (PUK) , proposing a “polypsychic” mind composed of autonomous complexes rather than Freud’s unified ego. Her work positions the deep psyche as a collective human experience directly relating Jung’s theory of Complexes and somewhat resonating with Jung’s later formalized Collective Unconscious.

A Jungian should recognize a familiar pattern in Spielrein’s argument:

The ego wants stability and continuity.
Psychological growth requires surrendering an existing identity.
This surrender is experienced as anxiety, fear, or even a kind of symbolic death.
A larger and more integrated personality emerges afterward.

Her work:

centered around transformation – her text opens with a significant Jung quote,
used Freud insights often as a special case affirming to subvert him (Yes, But),
reformulated and generalized them using Jung’s core concepts developing her own insights and deviations to it,
used specific semantic and semi-Freudian compound terms, to bridge differences in lingo and concepts (e. g. Freud’s “I” (Ich / Ego) is not purely conscious),
synthesized remarkably transformation independent of Jung,
moved away from a purely Freudian psychology actually developing her own insights and, deviations to it,
tested her hypothesis with clinical diagnoses or different layer of the psyche.

This essay could have begun: “After forgotten for about 60 years, an archival discovery of Sabina Spielrein’s manuscripts in Geneva in the late 1970s and early 1980s single-highhandedly triggered a rebirth of her legacy. A suitcase containing her extensive personal papers, including her private diaries, developmental psychology notes, and over 80 letters exchanged with Carl Gustav Jung and Sigmund Freud.”

Did it? I read what I got hands on. It seems, a lot was written of her since then, but little clarity was achieved. The independent theorist came again in the cross hairs of Freudians, Jungians,.. and plenty of new posthumous ‘friends’. Arguable she became a vessel for their cause, a projection screen for them, a juicy human interest story.

PRIMARY SOURCE APPARATUS

Spielrein Core Texts

Spielrein, S. (1912) Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens.Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschung,IV. Band. I. Hälfte. 1912 :465-503 via internet active
Spielrein, S. (1994). Destruction as cause of becoming (1994) Journal of Analytic Psychology 1994 39 155-186
Spielrein, S. (1912). Destruction as cause of becoming (S. K. Witt, Trans.). Instituto de Psicoterapia e Investigación Psicoanalítica (INDEPSI) & Área Lacaniana de la Saff (ALSF-Chile). alsf-chile.org
Spielrein, S. (1982). Letters from Sabina Spielrein to C. G. Jung. In: A. Carotenuto (Org.), A secret symmetry: Sabina Spielrein between Jung and Freud (pp. 45-90). New York: Pantheon Books
Spielrein, S. (1982). Letters from Sabina Spielrein to Freud. In: A. Carotenuto (Org.), A secret symmetry: Sabina Spielrein between Jung and Freud (pp. 91-133). New York: Pantheon Books
Spielrein, S. (1982). Diary of Sabina Spielrein to C. G. Jung. In: A. Carotenuto (Org.), A secret symmetry: Sabina Spielrein between Jung and Freud (pp. 3-44. New York: Pantheon Books
Spielreins’s doctoral thesis and her famous publication “Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens” Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, Jung Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido IV. Band 1912 (JdP_IV_1912_1_SpielreinJung)

Spielrein Secondary

Carotenuto, Aldo. A Secret Symmetry: Sabina Spielrein Between Jung and Freud. New York: 1982.
Kerr, John. A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein. New York: 1993.
Sabine Reichenbächer Biography, Sabina Spielrein Eine fast grausame Liebe zur Wissenschaft Dörleman AG, Zürich 2005
Karger/Weissmüller (Hg.) Ich hiess Spielrein, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2006

Jungian Core Texts

CW 5 Symbole der Wandlung 4. Auflage Olten: Walter Verlag AG, 1952
Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung Briefwechsel Freud / Jung Fischer Verlag 1974 (also available by Princeton University Press)
CW 8 — On the Nature of the Psyche
CW 9/I — The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
CW 10 — Civilization in Transition (especially Wotan)
CW 11 — Psychology and Religion
CW 14 — Mysterium Coniunctionis (for transformation motifs)
CW 18 — THE SYMBOLIC LIFE MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS
McGuire, William (ed.) – C. G. Jung Speaking (Princeton, 1993) (for transformation motifs)
Four Archetypes Mother Rebirth Spirit UK, Edition 1971

Jungian Secondary

Jolande Jacobi Die Psychologie von C. G. Jung. Olten: Walter Verlag, 1971
Der Mensch und seine Symbole. By Carl Gustav Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, Joseph L. Henderson, Aniela Jaffé, and Jolande Jacobi. Olten Walter Verlag AG,1968
Aniela Jaffe Die Einheitswirklichkeit und das Schöpferische Erich Neumann und C-G. Jung

Freud

Freud. (1982). Letters from Freud to Spielrein. In: A. Carotenuto (Org.), A secret symmetry: Sabina Spielrein between Jung and Freud (pp. 114-130). New York: Pantheon Books
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
Sigmund Freud Darstellung der Psychoanalyse
Sigmund Freud Massenpychologie und Ich-Analyse
Sigmund Freud Totem und Tabu
Sigmund Freud Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905)
The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
Psychology of the Unconscious (1912)
The Ego and the Id (1923)
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964)