Short interviews with the Heads and Members of the Ukrainian Umbrella Association of Psychotherapy and the European Association of Psychotherapy following the Second Joint Symposium

July 18, 2023

Short interviews with the Heads and Members of the Ukrainian Umbrella Association of Psychotherapy and the European Association of Psychotherapy following the Second Joint Symposium

Following the results of the Second Joint Symposium, representatives of the Ukrainian Umbrella Association of Psychotherapy and the European Association for Psychotherapy answered journalists’ questions in a short  interview format. Irena Bezic, President of the EAP, Professor Alexander Filts, President of the UUP, Patricia Hunt FRSA, Former President of the EAP, Professor Larisa Didkovskaya, President of the Ukrainian Association of Gestalt Therapy, Professor Eugenijus Laurinaitis, Honorary Member of the European Association for Psychotherapy, answered the questions.

1. What does the psychotherapeutic community gain (benefit, ) from such events?
2. The world is changing rapidly, it is a fact.  But what exactly do we leave in the past and what do we take (form, build, grow…) for the future?
3. What has the Ukrainian example taught you?
4. What is your own formula for quick recovery?

Irena Bezic  

1. I think this Symposium is an oportunity to talk about the impact of psychotherapy approach in extreme circumstances. War can happen everywhere, refugees are coming from the war zones in the whole Europe. Discussion in international community about contribution of psychotherapy in helping people to cope with this diffficult circumstances can create new ideas in our work, and it is a platform to exchange experiences in their work with traumatized persons.

2. This is a diffcult question because there is no algoritam and no collective answer to this. If circumstances are changed, every person has an opportunity to build something new or not, and to leave something behinde, or not. It is very imortant to leave this decissions to individuals, and not to prescribe what should be left and what should be build. Or you start a policial party with the ideology you belive in, and fight for your ideas of what should be left behinde, and what should be the objective for the future.

3. The example of Ukrainian psychotherapist organizing this Symposium is showing constructive way to gether as much as possible psychotherapist involved in the topic they are dealing with – psychotherapy in war circumstances. I see it as a begining of a joint strucured and orgnaized work with traumatized population, and building a support net for the community of ukrainian psychotherapists.

4. There is no quick recovery after a big and complex traumatization like war. It helps a lot to stay connected and work together with the collegues in the same circumstances, and to stay in conntact with the collegues outside the war. International perspective is important to keep the mind open also for the „normal“ life, without attacks and fear of the next catastrophies.

Alexander Filts

1. The Ukrainian psychotherapeutic community is one of the co-founders of the European Association. We have been participating in the work of this Association since the first, founding congress, which took place in 1992 in Budapest. We were already active participants there, but our cooperation was sometimes more active, sometimes less.

In 2003, we held the first non-European congress of the European Association, that is, not in the territory of European countries. It was in Lviv, and there we made a very significant contribution to the work of the European Association, because we first proposed to include a scientific conference in the work of the EAP annual congresses.

In 2005-2007, I was the president of the EAP, and we formed a strategic scientific planning group at that time, which exists to the present day. We have always actively cooperated, and, not being an EU country, we have always made interesting proposals.

When the full-scale war with Russia started, we insisted that the European Association should take some ethically possible position and suspend the participation of the Russian delegation from the Russian Association in the work of the European Association. We didn’t succeed because European countries had their own arguments. And since then, we have had a very sharp and substantive dialogue. And when we realised that this issue required a very difficult compromise, we remembered our previous activities: back in the early 2000s, when we actually actively cooperated and proposed new formats for the European Association. That is why we decided to apply this practice and propose that the European Association should follow the path of discussion.

We have raised a very important issue not only for the European Association, but also for the whole world. And I am not ashamed to say this, because it is such a very important contribution from us, Ukrainian psychotherapists. It was a question of the ethical position of a psychotherapist in working with patients, with clients and with colleagues. Until now, ethical issues were considered to be rather meta-psychological issues that are not directly related to the work of psychotherapists with those with whom they work. This is our very important contribution, and we are trying to develop it, and we created the first platform two months ago. So now we have a second platform where we are trying to discuss various issues of psychotherapy in times of crisis.

2. This is a very difficult question to answer, because anyone you ask this question to will have to answer very subjectively. From my point of view on today’s events, we are leaving behind two thousand years of human history.

We are returning to the old orbit. It’s like a closed spiral or, rather, a previously undiscovered spiral or spiral movement. We are actually returning to ancient times. To ancient times in the sense that we begin to understand the world and nature as something that has a mind and a soul. And this was how people thought in the ancient world. And also to the ancient values, where the most important slogan of the entire ancient culture was “know thyself”. We seem to be trying to transfer this knowledge of ourselves to the world of digital technologies. We think we are delegating our knowledge to something that will help us decide who we are. But this can be a terrible mistake for us, we can delegate our humanity to something that is no longer human. And this is very dangerous.

So, we have made this spiral movement and returned to the fundamental values, but they need to be revised very substantially today. Therefore, our task, the task of everyone, is to try to understand and formulate what values we will live and exist on in the near future. It so happened that Ukraine has become the trigger for this whole discussion, and we see that there are forces in the world that want to leave us in the past two thousand years with such a mechanistic understanding of man. And there are probably some forces that want to understand a little differently what we are, or who we are as people, and most importantly, what the human soul is. But this is another question.

3. There is a lot to say here, but unfortunately, I have to be very brief. I would say that the current situation in the world has put us in the face of the fact that this is a war, de facto, of both weapons and information, that the war of information is perhaps more important than the war of weapons.

We didn’t know this before, we didn’t understand it before, and so I can say from my experience that all my, all our previous knowledge in psychiatry, psychotherapy or an attempt to combine psychiatry with psychotherapy is insufficient – this is my position, because I have a double qualification, this and that. We began to understand that our previous knowledge is not entirely suitable for us, or rather, it is not always suitable, and we have to focus our attention differently on the fact that there is still a person in difficult circumstances, and we have few tools for such understanding today, and therefore we are in a search field.

The result of this is a self-evident fact: the psychotherapeutic community is beginning to communicate very actively around the world. All barriers have been removed, all boundaries between the world’s communities – there are no better, no worse – and we are constantly in dialogue, in discussion. This reflects, in fact, the tendency that we are looking for ways to understand the current world and the contemporary human nature. Unfortunately, there are no good recipes.

4. This has been a central issue for all of us over the past year. First of all, I would say that neither medicine nor psychotherapy, and probably any knowledge of human beings, has a single recipe for everyone, and this is understandable, and there is no need to explain it. So, everyone has to look for their own individual recipe, which will really allow them to restore themselves to the best of their ability and to the fullest extent of their resources. To do this, you need to know your resources. And to do this, you need to know how best to replenish these resources. For some people, these resources are rooted in bodily experiences and bodily functions, for others in the emotional plane, for others in the purely rational and mental plane, for others they are intertwined. Therefore, everyone must know their own recipe.

If you asked me, I would define it this way. At the beginning of the war, we formed a large group of psychotherapists from all over the world. We meet every week to actually renew our resources, and we have formulated a very simple rule. A psychotherapist in the current circumstances should do everything to be one step ahead of those with whom we work: clients, patients, colleagues. Perhaps a step ahead in the sense that we have to do additional work to understand what is happening around us. When this additional work is done, it replenishes the resource, however paradoxical, and everything else is individual additions to the replenishment of resources.

Patricia Hunt

1. First and most important – it is the hope of the European Association for Psychotherapy that the Symposiums are providing support and professional nourishment to our colleagues in the Ukraine at this most terrible time in their lives. To conduct Psychotherapy in Ukraine while the war is going on all around, and every day brings new threats and fears, is an incredibly difficult and demanding thing to do. Every day they are offering therapy and healing to patients and clients while they themselves are at risk and may be in danger. So we hope the Symposiums, the inspiring presentations and the contact with European Psychotherapists is a good and strong support for this work. The second and vital thing is the connectedness of the psychotherapeutic community that happens through the Symposiums. Our Ukrainian colleagues, senior members of UUP, have told us in our regular meetings that they wish to be in dialogue with European Psychotherapists. They are thinking to the future once the war is over, and they are planning for the ways in which they hope Ukraine will be much more closely linked to Europe; to European culture; to European ethics; and to European values as Ukraine re-builds when the war is over. This is especially important because research and history demonstrates that there can be a period of vacuum in a country and in society after war is over, and the vacuum is not positive. Through our Symposiums there is the opportunity to successfully have the dialogue with European colleagues. In thinking ahead to the future once the war is over our Ukrainian colleagues are already planning in a positive way, and hopefully this will help to prevent a vacuum form developing.

The final and quite practical thing is that the psychotherapeutic community gains professional development events through the Symposiums. The professional standards that Psychotherapists have to maintain each year are strict and high, reflecting the importance of the work that they are doing. The professional standards include professional development which continues throughout a Psychotherapists career through conferences and courses.

2. Speaking as a Psychotherapist my view is that we need to leave in the past the kind of human ego which seeks to dominate, to control, and to greedily be in charge of our world. The ego of humanity generally has become too strong for the planet that we live on, and particular egos dominate far too much of the land, the money, and the resources of the planet. As humanity we need to move from ego systems to ecosystems. We need to recognise with humility the part we play on this planet. We are only one part of a bigger ecosystem. Most communities in the natural world have phases of growth, and then of stability where no more overall growth occurs but – most importantly – the community still thrives. The Amazonian rainforest is a good example of this. It has existed for 10,000 years on the same piece of ground, and has not contaminated the atmosphere around it. Within the Amazonian rainforest community life thrives and there is rich biodiversity. For humanity there is a great deal that we can learn here. Humanity needs to and can mature in its thinking; we need to and can stop using up more and more of the planet’s resources; we are expert problem solvers and we can find ways to live and thrive whilst not depleting the planet we live on.

In my view Psychotherapists have a part that we can play in all this in society due to our insights, our expertise and our understanding of psychotherapeutic theories about ego and the human mind. We can be peace builders; we can be agents for the positive changes in humanity’s mindset which can happen, so that we live in a mature way in harmony with our planet, our home.

3. Myself and senior EAP colleagues began meeting regularly with senior UUP colleagues in Autumn 2022. I didn’t really know what to expect. What I have discovered through our meetings is something that I have immense admiration for. Our Ukrainian colleagues felt themselves to be victims of their situation in the past, but they are not victims of their situation anymore. They have become authors of their own lives, and even more than this, they hope to be able to be authors of the new Ukraine that will emerge when the war is over. This is absolutely incredible, and wonderful to have achieved this development whilst the war is still going on. This is the hope for the future of Ukraine.

4. I am not particularly interested in quick recovery, because in my therapeutic experience with patients when this happens it is often a flight into health, and not real healing.

Larysa very wisely quoted a proverb in her presentation to the Second UUP and EAP Symposium:

Ukraine wishes to go far and so the journey is best taken with others. Both I and my EAP colleagues are very happy, and indeed privileged, to be on the journey with our Ukrainian colleagues as they respond to the needs of people in their country, and work together for the better future of Ukraine that will come.

Eugenijus Laurinaiti

1. Professionals are getting the most fresh and up-to-date information and personal impressions about the extraordinary challenge to the psychotherapists – the war and other traumatic influence on both military personnel and civilians. All efforts and techniques of psychotherapy must be changed and adapted to these new conditions, and we must learn from each other – what this Symposium is about.

2. It is too early to separate, what old skills are still valid in our profession, and what should be modified or totally abandond. We are now in the process of historic change for humanity (not only war in Ukraine, but also influence of AI, climate change, extensive social networking, especially among young people). How it will influence our therapeutic practice we will be able to see only after something will stabilize, even if t will be the constant change.

4. This war teaches us, that history often repeats itself, and we must learn from the past much better, than we are doing till now.
5. Quick recovery is possible only for short-term pathological conditions (e.g., shock reaction to any kind of trauma), but long-term problems (e.g., PTSD) need time and efforts to be stabilized and cured effectively. It depends in great part on the resources of the person under treatment, not only on the skills of the therapist.

Larisa Didkovskaya

1. The most important thing is the consolidation of our experience, unity, integration of knowledge, professional support and professional solidarity. There is a sense of a professional community, a community of like-minded people. When you share common values, similar interests, identical priorities, you can exchange your uniqueness, combining it and turning it into universality. The main thing is to convince people that a quantum leap is happening in the Ukrainian nation. That these processes, self-esteem, self-awareness, a sense of pride, and the formation of national identity, which would have taken many more years, are now happening rapidly and dynamically. Yes, we are getting it. But we also understand that progress is not only about good. We understand that freedom is not only the freedom of the good, there are different kinds of freedom. And so it is optimal that only the best, only what will be useful to us in the future, passes through these filters of good and evil, and that what has proved ineffective, inappropriate, remains in the past, but I am aware that this does not happen.

2. For me, an achievement is what is called ‘growth’ or ‘traumatic growth’. Every person who has had such a traumatic experience has it, adding value and experience of overcoming. In the end, as the old saying goes, “for one battered man, two unbattered men are given”. Why? Because now I can cope with what I didn’t know about myself before, why I didn’t have proof that I was capable of it. In addition to the traumatic growth, the nation has gained global recognition in addition to the quantum leap. So, if you used to go abroad, a little further or even on holiday to Turkey or Egypt, and say that you are from Ukraine, you would hear the answer: “Yes, from Russia”. And now, in one day, the whole world has learnt that Ukraine is not a ‘Russia’. For a year and a half now, people have been learning this. In addition to the quantum leap of the nation, the traumatic growth, the global recognition, and the real courageous Ukrainians whom the world did not know very well, we are taking with us into the future a certain sensitivity to more effective security and safety management. All sorts of “Budapest memoranda” were discussed very actively, some fantasies that we should be helped, protected, guaranteed something, but it all turned out to be false, dangerous for the country and the people, and therefore the necessary understanding came that we need to organise our security properly. I think there has been a loss of illusions among many people about the possibilities of security guarantees. In addition, existing international associations, unions, organisations, the Red Cross and others have discredited themselves. In general, we are talking about the loss of illusions about the possibilities of guaranteeing global security. To put it very succinctly, there was a contact with reality. That is, reality turned out to be different from fantasies and dreams. And not only ours, Ukrainian ones. Let me repeat that this is a very expensive contact with reality, which turned out to be different from what we thought, from what other countries thought.

3. I also learnt things about myself that I didn’t know before. For example, that I can work harder and be more effective by combining all my social roles – psychotherapist, teacher, psychologist. In terms of psychotherapy, I am a Gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy is about relevance, responsibility, the ability to live in the here and now, to make a choice, to be responsible for its consequences. This principle, which means living in the here and now, i.e. in the actuality of the moment, in the awareness of one’s true needs, is actually now a conceptual one for survival during the war. Viktor Frankl wrote that the first to die in the Nazi concentration camps were those who thought it would end quickly. The second to die were those who thought it would never end. And only those who lived in the here and now survived. That is, they did what they had to do every day. They overcame the obstacles that were relevant. And this is the concept of the Gestalt psychotherapeutic approach – to live in the here and now, taking responsibility for your own life and its quality.

4. When we talk about resources, I probably have three most relevant resources right now. The first is a change of activity. The best kind of rest is a change of activity. I have a professional identity where I am a teacher. Then there is a part where I am a psychotherapist. Then there is the part where I am a supervisor. And this combination of these different activities allows me to switch. Secondly, I take care as much as possible to meet the physiological needs, that is, the usual banal things: not to reduce the amount of sleep, not to neglect any rest or food when the body itself declares it, because after the mobilisation phase comes the demobilisation phase. This is a possible balance of work and rest. Thirdly, it is a place of maximum efficiency. Yes, I won’t be of much use in terrorist defence. The last time I held a weapon was at a Soviet school, when we were assembling and disassembling a machine gun. But there is a place for my maximum effectiveness now: there is a need for psychological knowledge, psychotherapeutic help, supervisory help. I work as a supervisor in Caritas, I work as a supervisor in foundations that provide assistance to those in need. I also see family members of the military, the military themselves, and I teach this kind of work to my students at the university. This is the finest hour for psychologists and psychotherapists. As sad as it may sound, it is true.