The Soul Keeper
Directed by: Roberto Faenza
Characters:
Sabina Spielrein – Emilia Fox
Carl Gustav Jung - Lain Glen
Summary of the Film:
The story revolves around a young Swiss Psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, who took care of a 19 yr old Russian girl, Sabina Spielrein, suffering from a severe hysteria. Sabina was admitted into a psychiatric hospital in Zurich, in 1904.
Jung took care of Sabina under his care and for the first time conducted experiments with psychoanalysis method of his teacher, Sigmund Freud. It was also mentioned that Sabina had corresponded with Freud regarding her therapy with Carl Jung.
Carl Jung’s approach to therapy and counseling is more of the humanistic approach in which he shown importance and care to the patient. Because of his approach, Sabina felt she was special. This made her pour out her feelings, thoughts, and repressed memories of her childhood years from her unconscious mind to the young doctor. Some of the repressed memories are like those of the beatings made to her by her father. She grown fond of Jung and later become attached to her physician. Sabina developed emotional and sexual relationship with Carl Jung.
The treatment is successful, but their affair displeases Jung’s wife. Sabina moves to Soviet Union and became psychoanalysts herself founding the famous White School. Sabina Spielrein died in 1942, a victim of Nazi violence.
The film was outlined from the modern-day scholar investigation to what happened to Sabina after her move. The two modern researchers are Marie, a young French scholar, and Fraser, a historian from Glasgow. The investigation leads to the discovery of the missing portions of the original correspondence between Jung and Spielrein.
Important Facts about Sabina Spielrein and Carl Gustav Jung:
- Sabina was born in 1885 into a family of Jewish doctors in Rostov, Russia. Her mother was a dentist and her father is a physician.
- She became of the first female psychoanalysts
- She was married to Pavel Scheftel, a Russian Jewish descent physician; her daughters are Renate (1912) and Eva (1924)
- She was admitted in August 1904. Her symptoms include regular visits from German speaking angel who often directed her actions.
- She established a deep emotional and sexual relationship w/ a young doctor, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, who later became her medical dissertation advisor.
- She graduated in 1911; her dissertation was about Schizophrenia and was later elected a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic society.
- Her conception of the sexual drive as containing both an instinct of destruction and an instinct of transformation, presented to the society in 1912, in fact anticipates both Freud’s “death wish” and Jung’s view on “transformation” (Bettleheim 1983)
- She established a kindergarten in Moscow “The White School”. The institution was committed bringing up children as free persons as easily as possible. Later, it was closed due to false accusation of practicing sexual perversions on the children.
- Her letters, journals, and copies of hospital records were revealed and published, as was her correspondence with Jung and Freud.
- Spielrein, however, kept a of Jung’s letters to her along with carbon copies of everything she wrote him, and stored all of the letters in a trunk and she kept with her for the most of her life. This was accidentally unearthed less than 30 yrs ago in the basement of a palace in Geneva that once housed the City’s psychology institute of letters.
- Dr. Carl Gustav Jung was dismissed by Bleuler from Burgholzli due to breach of professional ethics as a result of his affair with his patient, Sabina.
Is Carl Jung an Effective Therapist?
Objectively and technically, he was an effective therapist because he was able to practice psychoanalysis to the patient and the result was successful to get expected results, which is to retrieve repressed emotions, thoughts, and feelings from the unconscious mind of the patient. However, he wasn’t able to display professionalism and ethics as a therapist. He was not able to draw thin line between personal and professional relationship with his patient. He should have kept a psychological distance to his patient. He did things right, like mastering the psychoanalysis to cure patients, however, he was not able to do things in the right way, thus making him an effective therapist but not an efficient one. Righteousness and ethics are very important in counseling in able for you to become effective and efficient therapist.
What are the Things to be avoided in counseling?
Ethics and professionalism are deemed important in counseling. In the Philippines, the Philippine Guidance and Counseling Association proposed a code of ethics for counselors and the counseling profession.
The proposed code of ethics includes some of the things to be avoided in counseling. The following cited are some of the highlights
Ethical Behavior – In this section, counselors are expected to act as professionals during their counseling sessions and also in dealing with their fellow professionals. So they should avoid unprofessional acts.
Sensitivity to Diversity and Equal Opportunity – Counselors should avoid discrimination; therefore they are expected to be sensitive to diversity of the client and should respect it. This diversity is in terms of religion, race, culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, education, and socio economic status. They should provide equal opportunity to everyone to avail counseling services in various setting regardless of age, gender, socioeconomic status, civil status, religion, culture, ethnicity, disability, and sexual orientation.
Confidentiality – The counselors are expected to maintain integrity as an individual who keeps respects confidentiality. They should protect and safeguard information retrieve from clients unless it will endanger the client or as per legal requirement.
Dual Relationships - Counselors avoid personal, familial, social and/or business relationships except those already existing prior to the establishment of the counseling relationships.
References:
Perry Seibert, “All Movie Guide: My Name Is Sabina Spielrein, Prendimi L'Anima
CODE OF ETHICS FOR COUNSELORS AND THE COUNSELING PROFESSION
PHILIPPINE GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING ASSOCIATION, INC.
Accredited Professional Organization (APO)
by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC)
PROPOSED CODE OF ETHICS
(REVISED as of December 21, 2006 @ Dr. Villar’s Residence)
Accredited Professional Organization (APO)
by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC)
PROPOSED CODE OF ETHICS
(REVISED as of December 21, 2006 @ Dr. Villar’s Residence)
reported by Eloi Casis
Jan 2010
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