Readers of TAP who have attended Board or Council meetings over the past ten years may recall hearing of the efforts of the Russian-American Educational Exchanges Committee to bring back psychoanalysis to Russia. The early years of our project, from 1989 to 1992, were described in a report in the December 1992 issue of TAP. Since that time we have come a long way, in spite of financial and bureaucratic obstacles.
We understood our mission to have two aims: to teach the eager members of groups in Moscow and St. Petersburg basic psychoanalytic principles and their applications in doing psychotherapy, and to help selected, promising young therapists obtain analytic training in the United States.
In regard to the latter aim, we hoped that at least a few of those trained here might return to be the nucleus of a psychoanalytic training program under IPA auspices. However, it now seems likely that of the eight Russians we have helped sponsor in this country only two, or at most three, will return. We expect the others will be of considerable value in our teaching visits with their knowledge of the language and culture of Russia. Already we have enjoyed the help of two in this group in the past academic year of teaching.
We have concentrated on building and refining our program of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which has gone through some difficult years in order to reach a level at which we could offer our Russian colleagues an integrated course patterned after those offered by many of the societies and institutes of the American. We are collaborating with the East European New Groups Committee of
Homer C. Curtis, M.D., is the chair of the Russian-American Educational Exchanges Committee.
the IPA, which has been working to provide specially approved condensed or so-called “shuttle” analysis and supervision with training analysts in other European countries. Those chosen for this training are the most experienced psychotherapists, many of whom began their search for psychoanalytic enlightenment during the dark days of the communist regime. A landmark was recently reached at the IPA meeting in Santiago, when the first person to complete this special program was accepted as a direct member of the IPA, thus becoming the first accredited analyst in modern Russia.
We hope that our teaching of the younger cohort will provide future candidates for this slow, painstaking process under difficult conditions in Russia. In the meantime we are offering help to our students in their current psychotherapy practices, as well as providing a basis for the spread of knowledge and interest in the scientific, humane, and cultural aspects of psychoanalysis. With time, our curriculum might evolve in a more focused psychoanalytic direction, perhaps contributing to the didactic part of tripartite education to supplement the condensed analysis and supervision of the IPA program.
The implementation of this goal in 1998–99 took the form of seven ten-day visits to Moscow and St. Petersburg by teams of four or five analysts. References for the topic of the visit are sent to be translated and discussed in advance of the team's visit. A much-appreciated grant from the American Psychoanalytic Foundation provided us with PEP CD-ROMs for each group, which will make the literature available to them more readily. Our emphasis is on clinical applications of analytic principles, and thus the students especially value individual and group supervisions as well as case presentations by the teachers. Our hosts provide us with cultural activities such as operas, ballets, museums, and visits to the wonderful summer palaces in St. Petersburg.
We are now involved in the second, more advanced year of this course. We invite the interest and participation of members of the American. Please let us know if you would like to join our faculty.