ABSTRACT
Ivanov was then Chief in the Department of Psychiatry at the S. M. Kirov Institute of Medicine at Gorky. His article focused on the orientation of group therapy in the Soviet Union, and its differences from the West. Some extracts from his paper are reprinted:
Under the socialist system the most important aspects of the social development of the personality are provided for by the government, and the clinician has no reason to substitute general social problems for clinical ones. The principal objectives of group psychotherapy abroad—the establishment of more harmonious relationships among human beings—are achieved in our country by our society’s organizations, and the fact that a man participates in a collective during all periods of his life…. The methods of Soviet psychotherapy have been developed in the 160direction of adding depth to the directly, clinical objectives of alleviating or completely eliminating morbid phenomena, of returning the patient as rapidly as possible to his primary activity in society as a member of a production team.
What is of prime importance for the psychotherapist abroad is the ‘free’ mutual exposure of their ‘complexes’ by the patients. The Soviet psychotherapist builds collective psychotherapy on the basis of the guiding and directing role of the physician, whose job it is to provide conscious discussion, assimilation and application by members of the group of his explanations and instructions with respect to treatment and other measures tend’ ing to modify and overcome the disease. This does not require the patients to reveal the ‘secrets of their psyches’ to each other. The group constitutes a unified collective whose members give each other active assistance in carrying out the physician’s instructions, and this is made easier by the acceptance of a common goal and by the mutual positive emotional influence of the patients upon each other.
The Soviet psychologists and psychotherapists believe that what is fundamental in the structure of the personality is consciousness, the human being’s conscious relationship to the environment, a relationship that arises in the specific social conditions of his individual development. As a consequence of illness, particularly of conditions such as neuroses, a human being’s relationships may acquire a nonharmonious character, but they remain conscious….
Group therapy is one of the many methods in psychotherapy having specific points of superiority derived from the favourable influence of the group upon the patient, but it does not in any way replace the methods of individual psychotherapy.
