ETHICAL TRANSGRESSIONS IN PSYCHOANALYTIC PRACTICE DURING THE ONGOING WAR
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/upj/2023-2-2Keywords:
psychoanalysis, ethics, transgression, neutrality, Ukrainian psychoanalystsAbstract
The article is devoted to the influence of the war of aggression in Ukraine on psychoanalytic ethics, highlights and analyzes the change of ethical criteria in the practice of psychoanalysis, especially in terms of maintaining neutrality. Ethical guidelines, first stated by Freud in his works on technique, are dominant in psychoanalysis and have been valid for peacetime for over a century. They guarantee the creation of an analytical space where psychoanalysis unfolds between two people in an isolated from external reality room, and can safely perform its main mission – impartially the subject's search for truth. And where the neutrality of the psychoanalyst is the basis of success in the course of the analysis. With the beginning of a full-scale invasion, the psychoanalytic frame suffered significant damage. The psychoanalyst and the analysands ended up in a shared catastrophic reality in which adherence to Freud's instructions became impossible. The existential risks that the war brought prompted the evolution of an ethical position. Neutrality has become an element of danger. Ethics, which was designed to create security, required self-disclosure and transition from neutrality to the declaration of a pronounced ethical position regarding attitude to war. A transgression has occurred: psychoanalysts have gone beyond the limits of peacetime ethics: abandoning the position of neutrality, they prefer to assume the role of "savior", "analyst-mother". This new way of psychoanalytical work – the ethics of "caring for others" – became the leading, especially in the first stages of the war. A shift in the ethical paradigm also caused a rift in relations with Russian psychoanalytic communities through their politics of so-called neutrality or even support for war. There was a Resolution on this matter adopted by the Division "Psychoanalytic Psychology and Psychotherapy" of the NPA of Ukraine. Thus, psychoanalytic ethics during Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, having changed its tactical position, it remained true to its the main reference point is the freedom of the subject.
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