Homer Curtis has stepped down as chair of the ad hoc Committee on Russian-American Educational Exchanges after ten years of extraordinary service.
Curtis founded the committee at the end of his term as president of the American in 1990. That year, Curtis wrote Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the USSR, an appreciative letter regarding his radical reforms of the Soviet Union. With the help of Martin Azarian (head of International Universities Press) and Arnold Rothstein, Curtis arranged to send a delegation of American psychoanalysts to Russia. An official letter of invitation came from the heads of Russian psychiatry, and a well-attended two-day symposium with prominent Pavlovians established connections with other groups untainted by Soviet officials' involvement in psychiatric abuse of dissidents. Psychoanalysis has had a rich but intermittent history in Russia, from the Russian translation of Freud's Dreambook in 1908 to some government support by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s (until it was realized that Freud and Marx made strange bedfellowsl).
Today our volunteer teachers travel to Russia in teams of three and four, for ten days to two weeks at a time, seven or eight times a year. Their experience has been greatly enriched by living with and getting to know their Russian colleagues and their families. Curtis's efforts and enthusiasm have energized this innovative program from its start. Freudian theory and technique as well as ethics are now being taught in Russia, and this year a team will teach in Kiev and Kharkov in the Ukraine.
Curtis will still serve as a consultant to the committee and remain part of the teaching program. Gary Goldsmith is the new chair.
— Janice S. Lieberman