Michael Gerard Plastow is a psychoanalyst (Analyst of the School, The Freudian School of Melbourne, School of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, and Analyst Member of the Association Lacanienne Internationale) practising in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a child and adolescent psychiatrist based at Alfred Child and Youth Mental Health Service. Michael convenes a seminar on The Child, the Adult, and the Subject of Psychoanalysis. He is the author of innumerable psychoanalytic papers, as well as the book What is a Child?: Childhood, Psychoanalysis, and Discourse, published by Karnac, London, 2015. His translation of Lacan’s seminar The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst appeared in 2013 as a bilingual edition in a non-commercial publication of É ditions de l’Association Lacanienne Internationale, Paris.
This is the first book to take stock of the fact that Sabina Spielrein was the first person to become an analyst as an outcome of her analysis. Drawing upon Spielrein's writings in German, including those not yet translated, Michael Gerard Plastow shows us the importance of her love for C.G. Jung, which here is interpreted as the truth of love in the transference. Spielrein's sensitivity to the resonances of language, to the equivocations of the signifiers, as well as to the division of the subject, are a constant in her writings. Jung, wanting to retain his place as analyst but embarrassed by his love for his patient, made the error of not recognising the subjective disparity that is characteristic of the transference, and of interpreting signifiers with meaning. On the other hand, the sublimation to which her writings bear witness, allowed Spielrein a savoir faire regarding the resistances of her analyst. --Erik Porge, psychoanalyst practicing in Paris, co-founder of the Association de Psychanalyse Encore and editor-in-chief of Essaim.