Psycho-Analysis in Russia

Owing to the political state of Russia, it is more than usually difficult to collect facts or to record progress in psycho-analytical circles. Russia has been split asunder by the revolution and the ensuing civil wars, and as there is no communication between the separate parts, it has been impossible to collect and publish accounts

either of proceedings of meetings or of papers read and discussed. Scientific journals have entirely ceased to appear during the last three years: the only journal concerning itself with Freudian conceptions— Psychotherapia —stopped publication in 1917, owing to financial difficulties.

Such being the conditions, it is only possible to speak or write from personal knowledge of what has transpired in the narrowest scientific circles, so that although psycho-analytical thought may be making headway in this or that part of Russia, no news has filtered through.

The followings reports are concerned solely with work done in Petrograd and Moscow. Dr. Sara Neiditsch (Berlin) is responsible for the Petrograd report, and Dr. Ossipow (Prag) for the Moscow details, to which Dr. Passenheim, who has but lately returned from that city, has contributed information which is incorporated in this general report.

Representative men of science show but little interest for the theory of psycho-analysis and none whatever for the practice thereof. At their meetings mention is occasionally made of the Freudian dynamic conception of mental processes. Freud's sexual theory, a priori, meets with little sympathy. In spite of this aloofness the position is not unfavourable, as the following facts will show.

Towards the end of 1919 the Mosga Institute was opened in Petrograd under the presidency of Professor Bechterew. This Institute was founded for the study of brain pathology. The clinical department was under the supervision of Dr. Tatiana Rosenthal, and the treatment of neurotic patients is chiefly on psycho-analytical lines, with Dr. Rosenthal as the offic