The fascinating story of Sabina Spielrein, as revealed through her diary and correspondence extensively studied by Aldo Carotenuto, begins in 1905 when she arrives at the psychiatric clinic in Zurich with symptoms of a severe mental disorder.
The young and beautiful Russian-Jewish woman is treated by Jung himself and eventually cured thanks to the pioneering method of psychoanalysis, which was groundbreaking for the time. Sabina falls madly in love with Jung, who initially reciprocates her feelings, only to eventually end their relationship under the threat of a major social scandal. Sabina then turns to Freud, who encourages her to actively engage in psychoanalysis, and with his intervention, she becomes one of the first female members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
After the October Revolution, she returns and settles permanently in her homeland, working as a psychologist and attempting to spread the radical ideas of psychoanalysis. With the rise of Stalin and the prohibition of psychoanalysis in Russia, her traces are lost, only to be recently revealed that she was executed by the Germans in Rostov in 1942 along with her two daughters.