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I read with great interest the series of publications in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis issue devoted to the work of psychoanalysts in the context of terrorist attacks and military actions (IJPA, 106, 1). For me, the subject matter of these publications is of particular importance, since it deeply resonates with my own work regarding the Russian–Ukraine war.
I would like to comment in more detail on Fakhry Davids’s paper “Challenges to Maintaining the Analytic Frame During the War on Gaza”, which cites some of my publications and those of my colleagues (Davids 2025). The author demonstrates subtle clinical work and shares important reflections on the interaction of clinical and social realities. However, it seemed to me that the context in which these publications are mentioned reveals some misunderstanding of my position and the position of the Ukrainian Psychoanalytic Society. This literal misunderstanding, in my opinion, is rooted in more fundamental differences in views on the analytic process and the functioning of the analyst.
In particular, the author writes:
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine produced several examples of in-group identification being mobilised as part of an us–them system in times of war. Mirza and Romanov (2022, 428), writing in the aftermath of the invasion, note that it is “impossible to figure out which Russian psychoanalysts … have been affected” by Putin’s propaganda and were thus hostile towards Ukraine. Sergio Benvenuto (2022a), a Western clinical seminar leader, concluded that his Russian group’s failure to disown the invasion meant that they were identified with their country’s aggression, which placed them in opposition to psychoanalysts’ shared “ethical commitment to freedom as foundational” … The emergence of a deep us–them divide in times of war is evident here (see also Bell 2022, 2023; Romanov 2023). The power of the polarising forces involved stems from the fact that our in-group identity exists within an us–them polari