Psychoanalysis and war: On witnessing Ukrainian psychoanalysts

The October 2023 issue of Psychoanalytic Psychologyopens in new window includes a special section featuring articles by Ukrainian psychoanalysts who have been impacted in their work and their lives by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Guest editors Oksana Yakushko, Kevin Meehan, and Nancy Williams share their key takeaways.

Since the 2022 full-scale armed invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Ukrainians have been living and working under conditions of war. In a special section of the October issue of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Ukrainian psychoanalysts provide a window into real-time clinical work, survival strategies, professional support, and adaptations of practice in socially violent and continually threatening circumstances. Descriptions of clinical encounters and personal stories illustrate their work with human beings facing the inhumanity and brutality of war. This special section invites readers to witness their current reality and thereby achieve a deeper understanding of the Ukrainian national experience, which encompasses a long-standing history of struggle for self-determination and justice in the face of Russian political and cultural aggression. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychology arose and developed during world wars. This special issue highlights ways that psychoanalytically informed psychological work is being developed, adapted, and challenged in such conditions today.

The contemporary world is experiencing an unprecedented rise in wars, genocide, and terrorism that take place not only via aggressive military actions such as Russia’s attacks on Ukraine but also via propagandistic online misinformation, misleading rhetoric, parallel attacks on people representing social diversity (e.g., gender, sexuality, racial, ethnic, and class differences), and other violations of established human rights. These experiences are inevitably brought into psychologists’ clinical and consulting rooms. It is vitally important to hear from psychologists who work under violent conditions and with war-traumatized communities and who are at tremendous risk themselves.

• Active war zones reshape every aspect of clinical care, as the lives of all clients, clinicians, and citizens in a community are upended by direct violence.
• Professional communities are vitally important for clinicians who are surviving trauma and working with severally and acutely traumatized individuals.
• Human reactions to the violence and overall conditions of war are complex and multifaceted; when more people witness and understand clinical encounters in this context, it may help individual professionals and the field in general to reformulate approaches to clinical practice.

• Survival in an active war zone reshapes all aspects of clinical practice yet can remain an anchoring reality for people who are facing military violence and genocidal forms of hate.
• Connections with other professionals are paramount for all aspects of clinical care, as well as for the professionals’ own survival.
• Observing the complex personal strategies for surviving war that clients and clinicians develop may help professionals in such circumstances find ways of comprehending and negotiating their clinical work.

This article is in the Clinical Psychology topic area.

Yakushko, O., & Meehan, K. B. (2023). Psychoanalysis and war: On witnessing Ukrainian psychoanalysts. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 40(4), 235–237. https://doi.org/10.1037/pap0000490opens in new window

Oksana Yakushko, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, fellow of APA, and board-certified psychoanalyst based in California and a member of Ukrainian diaspora. She is the author of many works focusing on immigration, xenophobia, trafficking, and uses of ideologies in constructing psychological theories. Since the February 2022 armed invasion of Ukraine by Russia, she has worked in numerous forums, such as publications, presentations, research, and clinical practice, to support Ukraine and Ukrainians. She is the recipient of numerous professional awards, including the 2021 Leadership Award from APA’s Committee of Women in Psychology, the 2022 APA Division 39 Scholar Award, and the 2023 APA Division 52 award for her global engagement.

Kevin B. Meehan, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Psychology and associate director of the PhD program in clinical psychology at Long Island University (LIU, Brooklyn Campus). He is a fellow of APA Divisions 29 and 39 and an adjunct clinical assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he collaborates with colleagues at the Personality Disorders Institute in evaluating a treatment for borderline personality disorder called transference-focused psychotherapy. At LIU, he directs the Social Cognition and Personality (SCOPE) Lab, which evaluates self- and interpersonal functioning, emotion dysregulation, and suicidal ideation in both college-age and personality disordered populations. He is co-principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health–funded multisite study evaluating proximal indicators of suicide.

Nancy McWilliams is a visiting professor emerita at Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology and has a private practice in Lambertville, New Jersey. She has written four textbooks (on psychoanalytic diagnosis, case formulation, therapy, and supervision) and coedited both editions of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual. A former president of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology of APA, she is a member of the Austen Riggs Center board of trustees. Her books are available in 20 languages, and she has taught in 30 countries.