ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 begins with a more detailed introduction of the current historical narrative of the acceptance and disappearance of psychoanalysis in Russia before the Revolution of 1917 and in the Soviet times. It picks up the threads of engagement with Marxist ideas and clinical developments that psychoanalysis received upon its arrival. It traces general shifts in Soviet science such as Russification and ideological alignment, as well as specific to psychology and psychiatry shift to physiology and exclusion of social reasoning from the scope of theories and clinical methods. The chapter proposes the idea that after the peak of political repressions in the 1930s discussion of psychoanalysis was not repressed or went underground but was covered by the disguise of negation. It suggests that following shifts in language, that occurred on all levels in Soviet society of that time, enthusiasts of psychoanalysis had to learn to ‘speak Soviet’ to continue the conversation around it. It concludes that with the inclusion of social strategies and informal practices that emerged in the Soviet society the historiography of psychoanalysis can turn to the re-interpretation and more nuanced reading of Freud Session in 1958. Also, the idea of negation of psychoanalysis as a disguised strategy opens the space to see the work of Luria, Zeigarnik, Bassin and Uznadze, which is going to be discussed in further chapters, as examples of productive interdisciplinary elaboration of the psychoanalytic theory.
