Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937), who originated from Russia, was friends with Nietzsche, Rilke, and Sigmund Freud, who trained her as one of the first women psychoanalysts. Additionally, since around 1885, Andreas-Salomé wrote a multitude of essays, novels, and short stories, and later also psychoanalytic literature. At the center of her novella "Ruth," published in 1895, is, as is often the case in the author's narrative work, a heroine with an emotional life that is heightened to the brink of the pathological.