Tender love and transference: unpublished letters of C. G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein

The author dissents from the widely accepted interpretation that the relationship between Sabina Spielrein and Carl Jung in the years 1904-1910 included sexual intercourse and constituted an ethical breach of the doctor-patient boundary in the course of a treatment. Spielrein declared that her treatment ended with her discharge from the Burghölzli hospital as Jung's patient in 1904-1905. Jung maintained he 'prolonged the relationship' in order to prevent a relapse and also referred to it as a friendship. Materials published in 1994 (letters, drafts, diaries, hospital chart) and unpublished letters recently found by the author in the Claparède archive in Geneva shed new light on previously published documents and interpretations by Carotenuto that have dominated the secondary literature since 1980. The new materials provide a more nuanced view of the Spielrein-Jung relationship and point to the function of non-erotic love in the therapeutic relationship. A new look at the Freud-Jung correspondence about the Spielrein-Jung relationship shows that Jung's perception that a sex scandal was initiated by Spielrein resulted from Jung's misreading of rumors concerning another woman; the episode had no ill effect on the relationship between Freud and Jung.