Visualizzazione post con etichetta russia. Mostra tutti i post
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giovedì 15 gennaio 2009

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”.

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.

lunedì 12 gennaio 2009

Acc. Professor Liudmila Alekseevna Verbitskaja’s opening speech

I am very pleased that most of the people in this room can be called students of St. Petersburg University. On this very day that is dedicated to the founding of the city of St. Petersburg (which it is important to emphasize), an event has taken place that is not only important for St. Petersburg State University, but for all Russian higher education institutions and very important for the entire worldwide education system.
Within a university it is always a major event when a chair is opened.
For this reason the University’s Scientific Board, which meets in this hall, has very seriously examined the Scientific Board of the Department of Psychology’s decision to open the chair of Ontopsychology in the Department of Psychology.
A new scientific school is born with the opening of the chair of Ontopsychology. What I consider most important is that the head of worldwide Ontopsychology is an extraordinary person.
It is often very difficult to answer the question: “In what scientific sector did Lomov pursue his studies?”.
He was chancellor of the first St. Petersburg University for seven years. Later, after thirty-one years, he opened the University with a location in Moscow.
How can Lomov be known within our science?
He was an extraordinary chemist, an extraordinary physicist, and philologists also claim him as one of their own because he was an incredible poet.
In the tradition of the University, he is a man who is well-known in a vast range of fields and sectors. I am very grateful to Professor Meneghetti because he planned and organized this project.
Now we are here today to continue what he began. Another question that is difficult to answer: “Who is Professor Meneghetti?” Because he is an incredible artist, an exceptional musical composer, an incredible philosopher, a man who has deep knowledge of all subjects that have to do with politics and economics of our time.
Today, it is Professor Meneghetti’s greatest talent that we are celebrating; he is a psychologist and founder of Ontopsychology.
I feel that Ontopsychology truly fits extraordinarily within the education that St. Petersburg University gives because at the university we try to represent the best scientists and especially include sciences that let us study the most complex subject, the human being. Everyone might agree with me on this.
I am sure that Ontopsychology is very important because in studying the person at different times of his life gives us the chance to go into the deep interiority of the person into that which can simply be called the human soul.
In Russia, we consider the soul the most important part of the person.
First of all, I am certainly very grateful to Prof. Meneghetti who gave me the chance to learn about Ontopsychology.
I remember the lessons I attended with immense pleasure.
I also thank Prof. Albert Aleksandrovich Krylov, who has supported this idea from the start, and of course for us, for Prof. Krylov and for Prof. Grishina it was a great honor when we conferred the first specialization diplomas in Rome.
My deep gratitude also goes to Dean Larisa Tsvetkova Aleksandrova who, even before becoming Dean had experienced the practical application of Ontopsychological science.
A big thanks to all of the teachers of the Department of Psychology who for many years have painstakingly prepared the event that we are celebrating today: the opening of the chair of Ontopsychology
And a special thanks to all of our students.
Without students, the chair, the structural unit of the entire University, could not exist and there could ultimately be no University.
The students are clearly what counts most in the University.
Thank you all very much.