THE COVID MONTHS | TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE | NOW AND THEN

Jennie with Dima, who has just passed his Certified Transactional Analyst Exam

A letter from Dmitri Shustov, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry, TSTA (P)                               RYAZAN, September 2020

Dear Christina!

Tatiana Sizikova introduced me to Jenny in Budapest in 1996. And from that time to the present day Jenny is present in my life. I think my breakfast in Utrecht before the СTA exam, cooked by Jenny (honey, nuts and bananas), is the most vivid memory to date. Memories take me to England and I remember alternately at home (your villa in Saltburn, your centre in Stockton and the NGP office in Newcastle, where pink lilies smelled strongly). then landscapes - the fields of North Yorkshire and the gray North Sea with magnificent white sandy beaches, green cliffs. Then I remember the people Jenny introduced me to. Peter Levine  and Yvon Lawrence. I lived with them in Whitby and had never seen such a lovely little town full of old people with white hair and crying white seagulls. I remember Paul whistling, who took Olga and me to the fantastic city of York ... I remember Pat and Chris having dinner in their house. They gave us a painting depicting Newcastle's Black Gate, which still adorns my house ...

What did Jenny give me as a psychotherapist? It would be correct to say that she filled my soul with light. She showed me the relationships that I absorbed and transformed into my psychotherapeutic inner space. The relationship that Jenny kindly invited me to have involved her family, her colleagues, and her students. I was even involved in a relationship with her two Scottish Terriers ... !

When Jenny came to Russia, and she was in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ryazan, Kislovodsk, Rostov, our relationship was determined by business. We gave lectures and trainings together, supported various Anglo-Russian programs and brought together many people around TA and large professional psychotherapy. But another, non-working part of our Russian meetings was devoted to music and visits to Orthodox Churches and monasteries. Meanwhile, the Russian TA-community was expanding, the method became more and more popular, and the leading scientific psychiatric and psychological Russian journals were happy to publish our articles. The impetuswe got from Jenny has recently become part of psychotherapy legislation. The TA method has been officially recognized by the Russian Ministry of Health as a treatment for alcohol and opioid dependent patients.

A new stage in our relationship began when the whole world was immersed in COVID-19 mourning. We decided to do a series of collaborative online workshops to explore our roots as psychotherapists and to appreciate the rational and irrational contributions of Teachers to the advancement of the community and Students. The first workshop was held in September, the second on October 11th. A large number of students, who knew and did not know Jenny before, There was a striking emotional atmosphere that allowed the unconscious aspects of our past traumatic experiences to emerge ...

I'm looking forward to meeting Jenny again!

From the Northern Guild Newsletter of June 2004 Edited by Lynne Farr & Marianne Downie Dima writes ….

Today, Russian psychotherapists of the Northern Guild create the new Russian Branch in the centre of Moscow. Saint Petersburg (Tatiana Sizikova) and Ryazan (Dmitri Schustov) have started their teamwork in Moscow and think of this new centre as the Russian ‘nest’ for trainee counsellors and psychotherapists as we have experienced the Northern Guild as our own nest from which they have now flown, returning from time to time to reconnect.  We expect that soon people, who study and apply Transactional Analysis, will group at the Moscow branch of the Guild.  The most important thing for us now is to create a professional membership and development-bringing relationships, the wider perspective will be to unite more people around Moscow and organise the Moscow Institute for Transactional Analysis.

We welcome everybody who is ready and willing to take part in this process and membership of this Russian site. And we are interested in trainers of the Guild to participate in our training programmes.

In April Jennie McNamara supervised my first ‘TA 101’ in Moscow.  She inspired the participants through her energy and passion. During the 101 I was challenged very strongly by some of the students and Jennie helped me to cope with this directly in the style of Classical TA. My daughter Olga was the interpreter and she had to cope with watching her father being ‘stormed’ by the group and contain her difficult feelings around this process. It was very interesting and personally demanding.

This was not the first test for Jennie during her visit.  The first great test took place the day before…… 2000 kilometres away from Newcastle at a distant and ancient Russian monastery Jennie entered ice-cold water (4 degrees below zero) in the font of the Saint Spring.  Mystic religious spirit has always accompanied Russian psychotherapy, Jennie is in tune with this and we always take her to visit a holy place when she visits. This time the challenge was strong as she particularly wanted to perform a healing ritual for Tessie the Scottie dog. To do this she had to immerse herself completely and without clothes in the freezing water of the spring. We did not believe she would do this and tried to dissuade her because of the cold but she insisted. All our students were glad for this fact.  The first Russian contracts were made between the church and the people about proper behaviour and prohibited the drinking of vodka in the temple! Entire villages gave undertakings in the face of God not to drink vodka and permanently desisted from taking it.  Traditionally in Russia people with altered states of mind, including insane people, were perceived to be specially loved by God and people believed they could predict the future or give the best advice. So they were in Old Russia considered a Saint and performed the duties of a psychotherapist. In the past lunatic ‘prophets’ hypnotised all the population of small Russian towns.

I do not want to say that each psychotherapist, newly arrived in Russia must be ‘christened’ by cold water, According to the Psychotherapy act in Russia, every psychotherapist must pass their ‘christening’ through working in an asylum, i.e. to get a Psychotherapist’s certificate.

 However I believe that everybody can have his peak experience here, possibly because the distance from God to Russia is shorter than anywhere else in the world!

Nevertheless, Jennie has supervised my TA 101 and 40 people newly joined Transactional Analysis.  Welcome!

Dima, Gold Medal Winner 2018, European Association foir Transactional Analysis