Missing link in the evolution of analysis

A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud and Sabina Spielrein by John Kerr Sinclair-Stevenson $425 THE events that led to the irrevocable split between Sigmund Freud, the Vienna-based founder of psychoanalysis and his closest collaborator, Zurich-based Carl Jung, have been chronicled in detail by numerous historians of psychology. With the publication of their correspondence to each other in 1974, all remaining questions seemed to have been answered.

John Kerr disagrees. Scholars point to the infamous ''Kreuzlingen Gesture'' of 1912, in which Freud snubbed Jung on a visit near Zurich, as being the final insult that turned Jung against him. But for Kerr, the origins of their split go back to August 1904 when a teenager from a wealthy, Russian Jewish family was admitted to the Burghoelzli Psychiatric Clinic in Zurich. Sabina Spielrein was Jung's patient and the subject of his first experiment using Freud's psychoanalysis.

Until 1977, the name Sabina Spielrein had been completely forgotten. Then a carton of her personal papers was found in the basement of a Geneva hotel. After close examination, it became clear that up until her departure from Switzerland in 1923, she had corresponded at length with both Jung and Freud and played a pivotal role in their parting.

Kerr tells a fascinating story of two extraordinary men and one extraordinary woman, a woman of great courage and searing intellect who deserves to be rescued from obscurity and given her rightful place in the psychoanalysis hall of fame.

If only his writing style matched the power of this real-life drama.

Unfortunately, Kerr cannot decide whether he is writing for fellow psychologists or interested laymen. At times he is lucid and penetrating, at other times obscure and weighed down by jargon. Too often he mentions case studies and technical terms without sufficient explanation.