MPS Activities
All MPS members are practising psychoanalysts in the process of developing and completing their professional qualification. They take part in academic seminars, conferences and supervisions.
The society has organised and continues to run psychoanalytical training in Moscow which adheres to international standards. We ensure these standards by holding personal psychoanalysis, as well as supervisions, and also through our theoretical and clinical seminars. The MPS takes part in international psychoanalytical training programmes. In the past our training analysts have taught at the Han Groen-Prakken Psychoanalytical Institute for Eastern Europe (PIEE). At present, they are involved in running seminars and summer schools at the European Psychoanalytical Institute (EPI), the director of which is Igor Kadyrov.
The MPS runs psychoanalytical conferences and seminars. It engages a broad range of mental health specialists in a lively discussion of the problems of psychoanalysis.
For more than ten years the MPS has come together on so-called Big Tuesdays. Not only MPS members participate at these monthly academic conferences, but we also invite specialists in psychiatry who have an interest in psychoanalysis. Presentation topics at Big Tuesdays cover a broad range of topics, from theoretical and clinical problems to cultural topics including the arts and history.
Since 2004, the ‘The psychoanalyst at work’ international conference has taken place every three years. A collaboration with the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the topic and format of the conference is closely tied with the journal’s column called ‘The analyst at work’. Famous analysts from different branches of psychoanalysis present their clinical materials, giving a brief history of their patients and outlining in detail the verbal and non-verbal interactions which take place during sessions. Two colleagues are invited from a different school of psychoanalysis to the presenter, and they offer comments on his or her materials. These discussions facilitate contact between representatives of different schools of psychoanalysis and help them to understand one another. Without naming all of the conference’s major participants, a few noteworthy presenters include A. Green, R. Britton, P. Williams, A. Ferro, M. Feldman, H. Canestri and D. Birkstead-Breen. The conference’s discussants are well-known psychoanalysts from abroad as well as their leading Russian contemporaries.
Since 2012, MPS conferences have taken place annually. Members of our society give presentations on the most current clinical and theoretical topics, including:
2012: Internal space, dreams and psychoanalysis;
2013: The Oedipus complex today;
2014: Male sexuality and perversion in psychoanalysis;
2015: The psyche, the body and culture: the container and the uncontainable;
2016: Object dissatisfaction.
Together with the Bureau of Psychoanalytical Solutions, headed by Igor Kadyrov, in 2014 the MPS organised its first psychoanalytical film festival called ‘The screen of the visible and unconscious’. Leading Russian directors such as Andrey Zvyagintsev (‘The Return’, ‘Leviathan’), Ilya Khrzhanovsky (‘4’), Vassily Sigarev (‘Living’) and Konstantin Lopushansky (‘The Role’) presented their films. Psychoanalysts from MPS discussed the films with a varied audience of other psychoanalysts, cinematographers, students and others. The event was met with much enthusiasm and we hope it will become a regular tradition.
Over the course of many years the MPS has translated and published major psychoanalytical works. These include, to name just a few: the three-volume ‘Modern Psychoanalysis’ by Helmut Thomae and Horst Kaechele (published in Russia in 1996 and 2001, translated by M. Argacheva, M. Arutyunyan, I. Kadyrov, A. Kazanskaya and others and edited by A. Kazanskaya); ‘Envy and Gratitude’ by Melanie Klein (translated in 1997 by A. Uskov); ‘Mind and its Treatment: A Psychoanalytic Approach’ by Veikko Tahka (translated in 2003 by M. Romashkevich); ‘The Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis’ by Ralph Greenson (translated in 2003 by E. Zimina), and ‘The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender’ by Nancy Chodorow (translated by I. Gil Son and edited by N. Kigai), among others.
Since 2010 the MPS has published an Annual of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. The MPS translates into Russian select articles of particular interest published in the IJP over the course of the year. The editor-in-chief is Igor Kadyrov and the assistant editor is Natalia Kigai, and the Annuals are published by NLO publishing house.
Since 2014 the MPS has published the Annual ‘Moscow Psychoanalytical Society Bulletin’ which introduces readers to the work of both MPS members and associates and also our colleagues abroad. The project was founded by Natalia Kholina, who is the Bulletin’s editor-in-chief. The Bulletin continues a tradition started in the 1990s, when members of the MPS put together special psychoanalytical volumes of the Moscow Journal of Psychotherapy.
Members of the MPS contribute to the life of the global psychoanalytical community, presenting their research at both IPA congresses and the conferences of the European Psychoanalytical Federation, publishing articles in international journals and taking part in intervision and research groups.
In the future the MPS plans to hold a summer school in psychoanalysis for interested non-specialists and students. The school will familiarise a new audience with the basic principles of psychoanalysis and explain how it relates to broader social and cultural issues.