The Analysts Who Came In from the Cold

The Moscow air was frigid the evening in late October 2005 when we touched down. The cloudy sky was ominous. But once inside the Danilovsky Hotel, where our Russian students received us, the atmosphere melted into the traditional warmth and generosity that we've been treated to for many years. Together with our students we had organized a conference, entitled “Contemporary Psychoanalysis,” to commemorate the anniversary of the beginning of American programs for teaching psychoanalysis in Russia.

Yet an even more spirited reunion was taking place within. Homer Curtis and Scott Dowling were returning 15 years after participating in the group of American analysts that made the first visit to Russia. In 1990 they, along with Arnold Rothstein and Sander Abend, delivered the lectures later collected into the volume, Moscow Lectures on Psychoanalysis. The year 2005 also marked the 10th anniversary of the school of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy with which we have worked, and the approval at the IPA meeting in Rio de Janeiro of the formation of the first two IPA Study Groups in Moscow.

The future role of analysis, its interpenetration with the culture, clinical traditions, and Russian intellectual history, form a story that is just now in the course of being written.

Our venue was suggestive of further surprises—the hotel is on the grounds of the Danilovsky Monastery, the seat of the Moscow Prelate of the Orthodox Church. One could sit back and behold what must have seemed miraculous a short generation ago: a lecture hall, in Moscow, with wall hung icons surveying us as we discussed the current state of the Freudian enterprise, dreams, trauma, homosexuality, the analytic relationship, and more. Who could have foreseen in 1990 such a rapid development of a psychoanalytic presence, not only in Moscow but in dozens of cities in Russia? More so, who would have thought that Russian analysts would so soon become colleagues in the fullest sense, and many of our students direct members of the IPA?

Yet this advance doesn't surprise those who have traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg to teach over the years. The Russian-American Educational Exchange Committee (REEC) has had the benefit of the skill and generosity of some of the best teachers in our Association. We are grateful to the dozens of APsaA members who have donated their time and energy on these many trips. But it is the heroes of the program, David Rackow, Sheldon Roth, Fred Fisher, and Richard Cornfield, who have gone back year after year at significant personal expense, to teach, advise, supervise, and befriend, who formed the backbone of this enterprise and assured its success.

In this latest trip, “we” meant Curtis, founder and former chair of REEC, our six lecturers, and me. Dowling spoke on “Contemporary Views on the Goals of Psychoanalysis,” Roth on “Dreams as the Royal Road to Unconscious Solutions,” Kenneth Reich on “Hope in Couples Therapy,” Rackow on “Working with the Clinical Consequences of Trauma,” Ralph Roughton on “Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Homosexuality,” and Howard Levine on “Intersubjectivity and Psychoanalytic Process.”

Plenary discussions, round tables, and small group meetings filled out the spirited two-day meeting, attended by over 150 practitioners in all stages of practice and training. It was a meeting of equals, with Russian colleagues participating as discussants of all of the papers. The skill of presentation, friendly accessibility and mutual interest were noted and underscored by almost all the attendees.

The present state of psychoanalysis in the Former Soviet Union is dynamic and fast moving. It is no exaggeration to say, as Freud said earlier in reference to Odessa, that there is now an epidemic of psychoanalysis in Russia. Russian psychoanalysis has come in from the cold. The future role of analysis, its inter-penetration with the culture, clinical traditions, and Russian intellectual history, form a story that is just now in the course of being written. Our purpose had always been to teach a solid foundation of psychoanalysis to our students, the first generation of analysts in Russia since the 1920s, to open up the freedom to think critically about all that analysis means, and to revive and support humane traditions in the field of mental health. We hoped to impart a respect for the individual in a region that had long favored the collective over the individual.

But the value of the program was hardly one-sided. None of us has returned without being impressed with the sacrifices made by Russian trainees to obtain their education in a field formerly closed to them, often against great odds, and with the energetic persistence of their long-sustained enthusiasm. Speaking with them even now, one comes away with a reminder of the still exciting and revolutionary foundations of our work. Perhaps this what warmed us at the start and continues to be the glow of the whole enterprise.