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 Spielrein's key role in the development of psychoanalysis and in the rift between Jung and Freud. Drawing on fresh research into Spielrein's diaries, papers and correspondence, John Launer tells the story of a passionate woman who transformed herself from one of Jung's disturbed patients into a leading figure in Western psychology and then the Soviet intelligentsia, before her murder as a Russian Jew in the Holocaust. Sex Vs. Survival shows how Spielrein's 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.

Author Biography

JOHN LAUNER is an honorary lifetime consultant at the Tavistock Clinic in London, the leading training institute in the UK for psychological treatment. He is also an Associate Dean for postgraduate medical education at the University of London. A doctor and family therapist, he is also a renowned medical columnist and educator both nationally and internationally. Find out more: www.johnlauner.com