The Journal of Analytical Psychology
'THE JOURNAL OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY'
Published on behalf of the Society of Analytical Psychology
Order a copy here

Russian Revival Psychotherapy Training

Re opening the Bridges

The Russian Flag

The upheaval in Russian society following perestroika and glasnost is both welcomed and rued by the ordinary citizen. With the opening of new possibilities there has come economic insecurity and a sharp drop in living standards. Assimilating the rapid changes and contradictions in the new Russia has inevitably generated widespread psychological stress.

Mental health problems, already chronic before 1990, now abound in adults and children alike. Housing is often cramped and crowded, offering little privacy. Health care provision is poor. Alcohol and violence lead to severe problems for families. Quite commonly, the father is either absent or drinking so heavily that he cannot contribute to the family income or well-being.

So a great deal falls to the mother, and often the grandmother. Children may end up in orphanages, either because the family rejects them or because it just can't cope. Even in more stable situations, children can be under intense pressure to strive for a more prosperous future than their parents have known.

It is only in the past decade that psychological treatments have begun to shake off the legacy of stigma and fear inherited from the corrupt system of Soviet state psychiatry. Now Russia is gingerly moving from exclusively drug-based treatments towards talking therapies. Russians had been amongst the earliest followers of both Freud and Jung and natural enthusiasts for depth psychotherapy until its banning in the 1930s.

With perestroika, psychotherapy is experiencing a revival and there is eagerness and professional commitment to re-establish it. At present there is a huge shortage of appropriately trained Russian health professionals with the necessary skills to treat the many deprived, mentally disturbed and traumatised adults and children who present to hospitals and polyclinics with mental health problems, and a paucity of relevant psychological literature translated into Russian.

The Project

Under the aegis of the International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP), in 1998 a group of senior London IAAP Jungian analysts initiated a training programme to help bring a group of graduates from the East European Institute of Psychoanalysis in St Petersburg up to international standards in psychoanalytic theory and practice.

Phase 1:

In Phase 1 the Russian colleagues successfully completed a course of seminars officially recognised both by the Russian Ministry of Health and by the IAAP.

Phase 2:

A pool of London IAAP analysts, giving their time on a voluntary basis, each visit St Petersburg four times a year, to provide our Russian colleagues with intensive clinical supervision of their psychotherapeutic work.

The Russian training group of 16 consists of mental health professionals working in the public sector, in polyclinics, university psychology departments and psychotherapy clinics and in NGOs in St Petersburg and Moscow. We are therefore training the trainers. Although well read in psychological theory, they have long been deprived of the practical skills-based training that in the West is the most essential requirement to qualify as a professional psychotherapist.

A major goal of our work is to remedy this lack, through the regular provision of personal one-to-one psychotherapy and the close training-supervision of their clinical work in small discussion groups. They have been stimulated by our training to form themselves into a Jungian Developing Group affiliated to the IAAP, through which they hold study sessions and reading groups, translate and publish psychological texts, and have hosted five annual psychotherapy conferences attended by colleagues from neighbouring countries.

Phase 3

In June 2003 and 2004, they undertook IAAP examinations, a necessary step towards qualification as individual members of the IAAP. We are very proud that the first five graduates from the project achieved their IAAP membership and were formally welcomed at the IAAP Congress in September 2004, and so become the first internationally recognised Jungian analysts in Russia.

We expect that another three Russians will attain the status of IAAP membership next Autumn 05, with others close behind. This significant achievement has created training vacancies, which have now been filled by new participants in the programme in St Petersburg (Phase 4), while the five newly qualified Russian analysts become available in a more senior role for the group as a whole, as teachers and future trainers, both in St Petersburg and Moscow. We will be offering them ongoing consultation to help them take up their supervisory tasks.

Phase 4

As well as continuing the programme in St Petersburg, we have already launched a similar initiative in Moscow, where 16 experienced health professionals, psychologists and psychotherapists started working with analysts from London in a two year programme from February 2004.

We are planning a Summer School in May 2006, to bring together psychotherapists from isolated groups across the former Soviet Union. We aim to train our Russian colleagues to a high level, internationally recognised by the IAAP, so that their clinical skills will have a beneficial impact on the mental health provision and infrastructure in Moscow, St Petersburg and the surrounding areas, including an active new Developing Group in Kiev.

Their inclusion in the international psychoanalytic community will help to ensure that they retain high clinical, intellectual and ethical standards of practice. It will also bring them the obvious benefits of wider communication and critical debate, with access to up to date knowledge and research within the mental health field, from which they have been so long isolated. The eventual aim is to equip them to provide their own internationally recognised, in-depth Russian training in analytical psychology.

PLEASE DONATE TO THE RUSSIAN REVIVAL FUND

Our ambitious and innovative programme is ongoing and has been possible only because of the continued sponsorship of the IAAP and the generosity of our supporters. In order to extend the training to other Russian psychotherapists as we hope, we will need further funds - £60,000 over the next three years. We have set up the charitable Russian Revival Fund, c/o the Society of Analytical Psychology to receive donations to help continue our work.

Please visit the Russian Revival Fund's website for further details.
Click on www.russianrevival.co.uk

The London IAAP Jungian analysts visiting St Petersburg & Moscow on a regular basis for the project are:

Please email SAP: office.sap@btconnect.com

The Society of Analytical Psychology,
1 Daleham Gardens,
London NW3 5BY

Telephone (+44) 020 7435 7696
Fax (+44) 020 7431 1495

Top of page Top of page