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This paper is a welcome riposte to Lothane's earlier article on the relationship between Jung and Spielrein, ‘In defense of Sabina Spielrein’ ( Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 1996, 5, 203-17), in which he claims that Jung had a fully constituted sexual affair with Spielrein while she was his patient. Lothane also portrayed Spielrein largely as a victim in this relationship. Lothane writes, ‘… while for the virgin Sabina sexual attachment was part of a greater love, for permanently married Jung it was no more than an amorous adventure, almost a God-given prerogative of the double standard, widely practised in European societies’ (p. 209).
Fortunately, in this later paper, Lothane presents a more nuanced view of the Jung-Spielrein relationship thanks to new material that has emerged, such as Spielrein's hospital records (see J. Anal. Psychol., 2001, 46, 1) and letters from the Claparède archive. Lothane emphasizes that, despite Spielrein's account that her treatment with Jung ended with her discharge from the Burghölzli hospital in 1905, Jung ‘“prolonged the relationship” in order to prevent a relapse and also referred to it as a friendship’ (p. 1189). In the light of this new information, Lothane reconsiders the allegations of a sexual affair and constructs a context in which it is far from clear that this was the case, emphasizing instead the different ways in which the word ‘love’ was construed in Europe at the turn of the century. Lothane also takes pains to correct his earlier reading of the Freud-Jung correspondence about Jung's relationship with Spielrein and argues that ‘Jung's perception that a sex scandal was initiated by Spielrein