DIALOGUE WITH THE RUSSIAN SOUL

The origins of the dialogue
The world was divided in blocks that regarded one another with hostility. Two blocks that interrupted every form of dialogue and even boycotted each other’s Olympic Games. Where others saw the “evil empire” one man saw a land rich with culture and interest in scientific development, a man who had studied Russian psychoanalysis with great passion and appreciated Russia’s independence from the Anglo-American currents, which were in vogue in the western world from the post war period onwards. In the early 1980’s Prof. Meneghetti proffered his hand beyond the iron curtain.
The Professor’s dialogue with the Russian world began at the end of 1983. His words and his books made an immediate impression in a culture avid for novelty. His book Clinical Ontopsychology was presented at the IV Book Fair in Moscow in September 1983, and caught the interest of Prof. Lomov, a scientist who studies the relationship between images and dynamics and the first Dean of the Psychology Faculty in Leningrad University (now St. Petersburg State University). The intuition that a new road had been touched upon in understanding man led Lomov to a personal meeting with the author of the book in Amsterdam in 1989. Meanwhile Meneghetti’s journey in Russia continued with a science meeting organized at the Psychology Institute of the Science Academy in Moscow, where some Russian scientists, including Yuri Zabrodin (Vice-director of the institute) and the researcher Alexandr Kharitonov, showed particular interest in the discovery of the semantic field.
Viktor Malinin, Vice-president of the Philosophy Association of the Soviet Union, participated in the tenth international Ontopsychology congress, “pedagogy and politics”, which took place in Rome in May 1984. Prof. Malinin then wrote an article for the journal Ontopsychology, where he noted how this new science could constitute a useful integration to the theory of man as a “social animal”, in the Marxist tradition in use in his country.
In the middle of the eighties a new young leader came on the scene in the Soviet Union, whom the entire world watched with close attention and a pinch of hope. The beginning was not encouraging, after the drama of Chernobyl which sank the world into terror of a nuclear catastrophe, Reagan’s America flexed its muscles, with the Star Wars project, which heightened the fears of a new world war. But Gorbachev answered this display of power with dialogue and opened the era of improved relations between East and West. Prof. Meneghetti’s relationships with the Soviet scientific world were also increasingly warm. In particular with Alexei Matiushkin, Director of the Soviet Academy of Science and President of the Psychology Association of the USSR, who introduced the humanistic vision of psychology and pedagogy in his country. Matiushkin participated in a meeting in Lizori, where he confirmed: “In Ontopsychology I find concrete steps for creating an alternative psychology for the development of global intelligence”.
The following year Matiushkin participated in the twelfth International Ontopsychology Congress, which took place at the Ergife Hotel in Rome, from 4 to 8 August 1988. On that occasion the Russian scientist highlighted that “in ontopsychology, a constructive relationship has been achieved between psychologists, doctors, psychotherapists, architects, pedagogues, writers and other creative figures”, he particularly appreciated its multidisciplinary character, which increasingly developed over the following decade. Matiushkin promoted a series of conferences which Antonio Meneghetti held in Russia in October 1989. In the same days that the Berlin wall began to fall, Meneghetti was already on the other side, having a series of meetings which were paramount for the diffusion of his thought in Russia. During that trip the Professor also met other prominent members of the Soviet scientific world, including Luria, Tsarov and Pankin. With these scientists and others that he had previously met, like Zabrodin, Lomov and Matiushkin, the Professor dealt with the theme of the development of psychology throughout the world, to provide a practical solution to human problems. In the following days Meneghetti held a conference in Moscow at the Psychopedagogy Institute of Psychological sciences and in Leningrad he met the director of the Academy for Pedagogic sciences, Viktor Onuskin, with whom he discussed the possibility of increasing the use of ontopsychological psychotherapy.
At the human Neurophysiology Institute in Leningrad, Meneghetti clarified to the public how he managed to cure schizophrenia by entering the patient’s mental images. On 26 October 1989, seven hundred people attended a seminar held in Leningrad University. Finally, at the same time he also met Prof. Albert Krylov, Dean of the Psychology Faculty at Leningrad University.