The nineties: Institutional recognition

The world enters the nineties and discovers globalisation. In Russia Prof. Meneghetti sees what others can only imagine. Russia in the early nineties was portrayed as a country on the edge of the abyss. But while others saw a real or presumed coup d’état, queues outside shops and people dying of hunger, the Professor saw a great future for that proud people, who had always been capable of overcoming the most difficult privations. In 1992 Gorbachev had just resisted a state coup organized by the old communist hierarchy. Shootings occurred in the streets of Moscow, but the door to communism had closed once and for all.
Having organized authentication residences in Uzbekistan and Ukraine, some seminars held in Russia inspired two of Meneghetti’s fundamental books. Image and the unconsciousness came from a five-day seminar held in Moscow in March 1994. In the meantime, after years of scientific collaboration, on 20 December 1994 the International Informatization Academy, a scientific body formed by the Russian Parliament and recognized by the UN, conferred the title of “Academician” on Meneghetti for his “original and unceasing activities in the research and development of Science” and in particular for the “discovery of the semantic field”.
In February 1995 he received his honorary degree in psychology from the Psychology Institute of the Academy of Science in Moscow. In June 1997, Ivan Yuzvishin, founder of Informatiology and candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics, met with Meneghetti in Rome and said: “In 1973 Prof. Meneghetti founded his science and discovered the truth by using his abilities in psychology, sociology, philosophy and art. Due to my preparation I mainly used other sciences like mathematics, astronomy, physics and biology. But we came to the same conclusion, that there is information within every thing: in the depths of human nature there is information, it doesn’t matter which road you take to get there. I am happy to have read and understood that Antonio Meneghetti is a great scientist and above all to have understood that I have taken the right road. I can therefore confirm Antonio Meneghetti’s discoveries with my scientific research: the principles of Informatiology are in accordance with the principles of Ontopsychology”.
In October 1997 the first Ontopsychology Congress in Russia was organized: it was the first world congress, and was held in Moscow at the Russian Academy of Sciences building. It was defined a world congress to acknowledge the globalization in progress, which means that problems and solutions should be dealt with on a world level. The numerous speakers at the congress gave over 150 speeches after the opening messages sent by Kofi Annan and Boris Yeltsin. In 1998 the Professor received the title of Grand Doctor Nauk in psychological science from the government of the Russian Federation.
OntoArte also entered the Russian scene in this period. After an exhibition dedicated to his works at the Artists Palace in St. Petersburg in 1995, in the spring of 1998 Antonio Meneghetti exhibited at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
Meanwhile Russian academics continued to study Ontopsychology and participated in the summer programmes in increasing numbers. Year after year the didactic methodology of Ontopsychology seemed to have an increasingly coherent design with the programmes of university study. These were signs that something important was about to happen, and it did. Russia’s great merit in the story of Ontopsychology is that it was the first country to institutionalize Ontopsychology. After two decades of increasingly close talks, at the end of the nineties Russia symbolically reciprocated the Professor’s efforts during the cold war and it was Russia that proffered its hand by taking his science into a prestigious University. In 1999, after a long gestation period the collaboration was made formal: they agreed to organize courses of study aimed at the training of professional Ontopsychologists in the Psychology Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. Two courses of study were organized: A four-year degree course and a two-year post graduate specialization. In 2001 at the Protomoteca in Rome’s Campidoglio (Capitol) the first eight diplomas for the Two year post graduate specialization were awarded. “History” – affirmed Meneghetti – “has always produced solutions from men who unexpectedly appear and offer their creativity to make an impact”. On 27 May 2004 in the Public Hall of the “Twelve colleges building” at the St. Petersburg State University, the official opening of the Ontopsychology Chair was celebrated. The University Rector, Ac. Prof. Ludmila Verbitskaja, made an opening speech of great impact: “In opening the Ontopsychology Chair a new scientific school is created. The most important thing for me is that the head of the world Ontopsychology movement is an extraordinary man. Who is Professor Meneghetti?” – Asked the Rector, affirming that it is a difficult question to answer – “because he is an incredible artist, an exceptional composer, an incredible philosopher, a man who is extremely competent in all themes that concern the politics and economics of our time. But today Prof. Meneghetti’s greatest talent is celebrated: he is a psychologist and the founder of Ontopsychology and I believe that Ontopsychology will become an exceptional part of the training that St. Petersburg University offers, because within the university we try to represent the best sciences and above all to insert those that provide the opportunity to study the most complex object: man. I am sure that Ontopsychology is very important because in studying man in the different moments of his life it gives the possibility to enter in the depths of man’s inner self, in what could be defined in simple terms as the soul of man. Russia believes that the soul is man’s most important reality”.