Psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union: On the History of a Defeat

Abstract

Until the mid-twenties, psychoanalysis enjoyed lively growth in the USSR: the State Psychoanalytic Institute and the International Solidarity Children's Home attached to the Laboratory of the Psychoanalytic Institute were founded, and a plethora of original and translated literature on psychoanalysis was published. The state publishers produced a complete collection of Freud's works. And then, suddenly, nothing! Not a trace was left of the Psychoanalytic Institute; and Gorky, along with his collection of rugs, replaced the children in the house at International Solidarity. The Russian psychoanalytic school was destroyed, and the books were forbidden. For a long time Freud's works were under ban in the Lenin Library, so that to read Freud, one had to bring from one's place of employment an "affidavit"—authenticated with a round official seal—that it was necessary to read this or that book. The situation has now begun to change, but not all of Freud's books have yet been moved from the special stacks to public access.