Letter from Moscow1

If one examines psychoanalysis in Moscow and the rest of Russia from the perspective of the development criteria for groups and societies belonging to the IPA then it can be said that Russia still classifies as one of the so-called “new regions”. In any case, the two currently existing Russian IPA groups, The Moscow Psychoanalytic Society and The Moscow Group of Psychoanalysts, were only registered by the IPA in 2005 and are still supervised by the international committee for new groups. The Moscow Psychoanalytic Society (MPS), to which I belong became a Provisional Society in 2011 and consists of 20 members. The Moscow Group of Psychoanalysts (MGP) comprises five members. Due to a series of internal problems, the MGP is developing at a slower pace and for now remains a Study Group. Although I am touching upon certain aspects regarding the condition of psychoanalysis in Moscow and throughout Russia, my letter is primarily from the perspective of a member of The Moscow Psychoanalytic Society.

At the present time in Russia, primarily in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Rostov-on-Don, there are more than 30 members of the IPA. The number of candidates who have completed their training at the MPS, the MGP and the PIEE (in Saint Petersburg, Stavropol, Krasnodar and Irkutsk) amounts to more than 60. This is a significant figure, especially if you take into account the fact that from the end of the 1920s psychoanalysis was banned in Russia and after the fall of the Iron Curtain the first member of the IPA in Russia appeared in 1999.

However, we can say with certainty that over the past two decades psychoanalysis has undergone a rapid and somewhat disproportionate development in Russia. Even though there was not a single qualified psychoanalyst in Russia until the end of the nineties and nobody could offer full psychoanalytical training, by the early to mid-nineties psychoanalytical institutes were starting to operate in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and other cities. These institut