My Name Was Sabina Spielrein

Anyone interested in the early history of psychiatry will be fascinated by this intriguing and slickly produced (though curiously dry) docudrama focusing on the life of a woman who, as a teenager, became the first patient of the young Carl Jung, and later his lover. After Spielrein was released from Jung's care, she went on to earn an advanced degree in the field herself and became one of the earliest female champions of the psychoanalytic method, specializing in childhood learning. Elisabeth Marton's 2002 My Name Was Sabina Spielrein, which not only covers the subject's medical history but also her personal life and professional career, is largely based on a cache of diaries, notes, and letters penned by Jung and his early mentor Freud (who offered advice to both him and Spielrein), as well as by Sabina and her mother, discovered in Switzerland in 1977. The script consists of extensive excerpts from those documents read in German by actors, with English narration filling in the gaps, accompanied by still photographs, archival footage, illustrations, and highly theatrical dramatic reenactments. Prior to the unearthing of the sources used here, Spielrein was known mainly through a single footnote in one of Freud's works, and even though this film could have been more compelling, it does provide a clear overview of her life—one that happens to have involved two of psychology's most eminent figures. Recommended, with reservations. Aud C, P. (F. Swietek)