A Dark Secret

I checked my blog statistics today and discovered a fascinating number.  Although the vast majority of pageviews originated in the United States, there were 19 Russian ones.  For completeness, I should mention that there were two others, one from Germany and the other from Australia.

Unfortunately, there is no way for me to know whether these pageviews were serendipitous or the result of a search.  I would like to imagine that my Russian audience searched for  "Psychoanalysis" and found my blog.

                                                  Nighttime in Moscow

Although  psychoanalysis was banned there in the late 1920s, with the arrival of Glasnost, Freud and psychoanalysis have experienced a small, but growing, revival in Russia.  I am very happy to learn that, and delighted to be a part of the global psychoanalytic community.

One of the reasons I decided to write this blog is that I don't personally know anyone who has any experience with psychoanalysis.  In fact, I have neighbors who don't know what it is.  I believe this might be a reflection of the particular culture in my decidedly non-cosmopolitan community. Even the few people I have trusted with this information, who do have some conception of its meaning, quickly change the subject, as if I've said a dirty word.  It is one of the reasons why psychoanalysis not only feels like lonely work, it feels like a dark secret.



Radio Free Europe, Claire Bigg
Post-Soviet Society Embraces Psychoanalysis--Again
http://www.rferl.org/articleprintview/1068196.html

Freud in Russia - Return of the Repressed, Allessandra Stanley, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/11/world/freud-in-russia-return-of-the-repressed.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm