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    Suggestion, persuasion and work: psychotherapies in Communist Europe

    Marks, Sarah (2018) Suggestion, persuasion and work: psychotherapies in Communist Europe. European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling 20 (1), pp. 10-24. ISSN 1364-2537.

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    Abstract

    This article traces what recent research and primary sources tell us about psychotherapy in Communist Europe, and how it survived both underground and above the surface. In particular, I will elaborate on the psychotherapeutic techniques that were popular across the different countries and language cultures of the Soviet sphere, with a particular focus upon the Cold War period. This article examines the literature on the mixed fortunes of psychoanalysis and group therapies in the region. More specifically, it focuses upon the therapeutic modalities such as work therapy, suggestion and rational therapy, which gained particular popularity in the Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The latter two approaches had striking similarities with parallel developments in behavioural and cognitive therapies in the West. In part, this was because clinicians on both sides of the ‘iron curtain’ drew upon shared European traditions from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, this article argues that in the Soviet sphere, those promoting these approaches appropriated socialist thought as a source of inspiration and justification, or at the very least, as a convenient political shield.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis, available online at the link above.
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): psychotherapy, Soviet Union, socialism, rational therapy, Eastern Europe
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Depositing User: Sarah Marks
    Date Deposited: 05 Jan 2018 09:10
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:38
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/20717

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