Abstract

CAROPRESO, Fátima. Subliminal thought according to Sabina Spielrein’s psychoanalytic theory. Psicol. clin. [online]. 2021, vol.33, n.1, pp. 141-159. ISSN 0103-5665.  http://dx.doi.org/10.33208/PC1980-5438v0033n01A07.

In recent decades, the importance and novelty of the ideas of the Russian psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein have been acknowledged. However, there are so far few works dedicated to a thorough analysis of her theory. Hence, a more precise assessment of the role she played in the history of psychological concepts has not yet been fully achieved. Throughout her work, Spielrein sought to understand the characteristics of subliminal mental functioning, which was one of her major contributions to psychology. The objective of this article is to analyze her main ideas regarding this type of mental process as she presented them during the course of her research. She developed such ideas in her attempts to understand schizophrenic symptoms and in her analyses of thought processes in children, dreams, hypnagogic phenomena, aphasic symptoms, and data resulting from research in the field of linguistics. We conclude that she formulated an original theory on subliminal thought, derived from her innovative psychoanalytic approach.

Keywords : psychoanalytic theory; Sabina Spielrein; subliminal thought; subconscious; symbolism.

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