Freud's Aphasia Book and Spielrein's Destruction Paper: A Shared Fate, To Be Ignored and Restored

Abstract:

This article discusses the early fate and subsequent revival of interest in Freud’s 1891 book, On Aphasia, and Sabina Spielrein’s 1912 Destruction paper. Early on, these authors shared a similar fate: a failure of recognition of the aforementioned works at the time of their initial publication. In Freud’s case, the number of books sold was minimal and the rest were shredded; it remained mostly unread and overlooked in discussions of neurological problems, although regarded as a classical contribution to the field of neurology. As for Spielrein, her paper, following its initial appearance in German, was not published until 80 years later in English! Although Spielrein had a profound impact throughout her mature career as a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and developmental child psychologist, she remained unacknowledged during her lifetime and was virtually forgotten after her death. This article demonstrates that, although the importance of their seminal works was overlooked, recent developments in neuroscience have revived interest in On Aphasia and, in Spielrein’s case, her contributions to psychoanalysis and developmental psychology have become classics in these fields.