Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

"I think that writing also is among the things that help me think this through and get there. When I finished my degree, I was actually very pessimistic - I had no idea that at close to age 55-56 that a psychoanalytic institute would even consider me but I did decide to take the leap and I ended up going to BPSI [Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute] and here I am." — Ellen Pinsky    "The training time was a time of discovering - we read the authors I knew, and what was happening to me also at that moment, what kind of an analyst would I be during and after the training? My background encouraged me to go on - when it was difficult to go on searching for the truth, searching for the knowledge, but the knowledge about myself during the training and it went on in my actual training analysis." —Susana Merlo    Episode Description: We discuss Susana's and Ellen's first careers in education and what led them "to wish to go deeper." They both describe the formative contributions of their own analyses as well as the influence of analytic writers that they valued. We consider the possible advantages and disadvantages of each of the many backgrounds that we bring to our clinical work and share conclusions about the similarities and differences in how we practice. We discuss some of their favorite writers and we conclude with their perspectives on the future of psychoanalysis both in the States and in Argentina.    Our Guests:  Susana Ruth Merlo is a member of APdeBA (Asociación Psicoanalítica de Buenos Aires, Argentina) and holds a position as an Associated Professor at IUSAM of APdeBA (Instituto Universitario de Salud Mental de APdeBA), where she teaches Introduction to the ideas of Melanie Klein and English School. She provided school psychological services in school settings for 15 years. At present provides therapy to children, adolescents, and adults in a private clinic setting. Susana holds two university degrees, School Psychology (1986) and Clinical Psychology (2007).    Ellen Pinsky came to psychoanalysis as a second profession following 25 years as a middle school English teacher. She says her experience in the classroom with 12 and 13-year-olds taught her most of what she needed to know to become a credible clinician. She is the author of Death and Fallibility in the Psychoanalytic Encounter: Mortal Gifts. About her book, Thomas Ogden writes: “Mortal Gifts is a necessary book—necessary for analysts and necessary for the analyses they conduct. In it, Ellen addresses a long-neglected issue in the practice of psychoanalysis: the analyst’s failure to include in the very fiber of the analysis the fact of his or her mortality.” In 2014 she was awarded BPSI’s Deutsch Prize for her essay “The Olympian Delusion” (JAPA, 2011)    Recommended Readings:  SM  Bion, W. Learning from experience. Aprendiendo de la Experiencia Paidós, (2009) Bs.As.    Hustvedt, S. The Sorrows of an American. Elegía para un Americano. Anagrama (2009) Barcelona.    Klein, M. Our adult world and its roots in infancy. Nuestro Mundo Adulto y Sus Raíces en la Infancia. En Envidia y Gratitud, OC. Paidós (1991) Bs.As.    Meltzer, D. A Psychoanalytical Model of the Child in the Family in the Community. Familia y Comunidad, Spatia editorial (1990) Bs. As.    Nemas, C. Strangers in Virtual Land. Toronto Psychoanalytic Society – 22nd Annual day in applied psychoanalysis (2021)  EP  Freud, Observations on Transference Love (1915)   Remembering, Repeating and Working-through (1914)    Freud, Fort-Da” from Beyond the Pleasure Principle, (1920, 14-15)   Paula Heimann, On Counter-transference (1950)    W. Winnicott, The Use of an Object (1969)   Hans Loewald, On the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis (1960)    James Strachey, The Nature of the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis (1934)    Brian Bird, Notes on Transference (1972)    Betty Joseph, Transference: The Total Situation (1985)    Ida Macalpine, The Development of Transference (1950)    Irma Brenman Pick, Working through in the Countertransference (1985);    Selma Fraiberg, Ghosts in the Nursery (1975)    Hans Loewald, Transference and Love (2000 [1988] 549-563)    Ella Freeman Sharpe, The Technique of Psychoanalysis, (on “Qualifying as an analyst,” 1930, 256-257). 

"The Archive begins in 1940. The Germans themselves do not decide they are going to murder all the Jews, they don’t decide on the Final Solution until late 1941. When the archive begins, Ringelblum is creating the archive in order to do what Max Weinreich was doing with the YIVO [Yiddish Scientific Institute] - that was to get people to write about their lives, to get people to describe their experiences so as to use the knowledge gained to help the psychological and the community rebuilding after the war. ‘The war will be over, and we will rebuild our lives, what lessons will this experience have taught us?’ The way to get that information is to get people to write essays, to do interviews."       Episode Description: We begin with the historical background that allowed for the conceptualization and creation of The Ringelblum Archive - the contemporaneous documentation by the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto. The thread of psychoanalytic thinking is identified in this work through the interest in everyday living, “nothing is unimportant,” and through prior contact with Freud and analysts. We discuss the authors’ intent to define themselves through their writings to allow their own voices to be heard as distinct from those of the sadists – as in analysis, to own their own history. We consider the concept of "cultural resistance" and what it means to try “to put a stone under the wheel of history." We close by describing the remarkable story of the uncovering of the hidden archive and the tragic end of Emmanuel Ringelblum. In addition, Sam shares with us aspects of his personal story that has led him to this labor of love.        Our Guest: Samuel Kassow, PhD, Charles Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, is the author of many studies on Russian and Jewish history including Who Will Write Our History: Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto, which was translated into eight languages and made into a film, as well as Volume 9 of the Posen Anthology of Jewish Culture, published by Yale in 2019.  He was part of the scholarly team that planned the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and is currently engaged in a project organized by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to write a history of the Holocaust in Poland. He has been a visiting professor at several universities including Harvard, Toronto and Dartmouth.  Professor Kassow holds a Ph.D from Princeton.     Recommended Readings:     Samuel Kassow Who will write our History: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007)        Israel Gutman, Emanuel Ringelblum: the Man and the Historian (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2010)     Natalia Aleksiun, Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021)     Cecile Kuznitz YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge University Press: 2014)     Social Science as a “Weapon of the Weak”: Max Weinreich, the Yiddish Scientific Institute, and the Study of Culture, Personality, and Prejudice  Author(s): Leila ZenderlandSource: Isis , Vol. 104, No. 4 (December 2013), pp. 742-772. Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society 

"I think every encounter with the patient is a potential re-humanizing experience, also for me as a therapist. Because when we are slowly experiencing this kind of positive emotion, especially when it comes to turning points, where the patient  realizes that it is possible to trust another human being, that is a really remarkable experience with these patients who have all reasons to not believe that it is possible to trust other people - who have been disappointed, failed and maltreated so many times. So that is a re-humanizing experience that happens between the therapist and the patient -  this is the best way to describe the process of a positive outcome of this type of psychoanalytic therapy because they have been dehumanized in so many ways and to such a degree, that for some of them it is a wonder to have normal feeling left."    Episode Description: We begin by appreciating Sverre's work on the torture-induced impingements on intrapsychic meaning-making. We also learn about the role of community and culture in supporting renewed meaning-making - a vital aspect of rehuminazation. We consider the case of Hassan and come to understand the impact on him of the horrific abuses he suffered and what it means to the analyst who comes to hear about and 'experience' such depths of depravity. We discuss survivor guilt, mourning, and disillusionment. Sverre shares with us aspects of his own childhood that have contributed to his interest in this work. We conclude with learning about the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society and its involvement in assisting colleagues in Ukraine.   Our Guest: Sverre Varvin, MD, Dr. Philos is a training analyst at the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society. He is a professor emeritus at Oslo Metropolitan University. He has had several positions in IPA. Currently, he is chair of the IPA China Committee and a member of the refugee subcommittee of the Humanitarian Field committee. He has been working with traumatized refugees for more than 30 years: clinically, with research, and in the humanitarian field. He has done human rights work as chair of the Norwegian Medical Association’s committee on human rights in the Balkans (former Yugoslavia), Turkey, and China. He has tried to understand the impact of atrocities on individuals and groups and has been specially occupied with dehumanization and re-humanization.   Dr. Varvin will be a keynote speaker at the IPA Congress in Cartegena, Colombia in July 2023.   The Congress website is www.ipa.world/cartagena   Recommended Readings: JOHANSEN, J. & VARVIN, S. 2019. I tell my mother that … sometimes he didn’t love us— Young adults’ experiences of childhood in refugee families: A qualitative approach. Childhood, 26, 221-235.   VARVIN, S. 2020. Gender, family, and intergenerational transmission of traumatization. Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China, 3.   VARVIN, S. 2021. Psychoanalysis in Social and Cultural Settings: Upheavals and Resilience, New York, London, Routledge.   VARVIN, S. & LÆGREID, E. 2020. Traumatized women—organized violence. Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China, 3.   VARVIN, S., VLADISAVLJEVIĆ, I., JOVIC, V. & SAGBAKKEN, M. 2022. “I have no capacities that can help me“. Young asylum seekers in Norway and Serbia. Flight as disturbance of developmental processes. Front. Psychol. , 12.   JOVIC, V. 2018. Working with traumatized refugees on the Balkan route. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 15, 187-201.   ROSENBAUM, B., JOVIC, V. & VARVIN, S. 2020. Understanding the refugee-traumatized persons. Semiotic and psychoanalytic perspectives. psychosocial, 43.

Karen J. Maroda, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and a practicing psychoanalyst, dives into the profound impact of early experiences on therapy. She discusses how personal histories shape therapeutic roles, highlighting themes of empathy, sensitivity, and self-sacrifice. The conversation touches on the complexities of emotional boundaries and the importance of recognizing one’s own desires in therapy. Maroda also explores the dynamics of conflict in therapeutic relationships and the significance of understanding countertransference to enhance healing.

Judy Kantrowitz, a psychologist specializing in analysis and teaching, discusses the concerns surrounding the movement towards inclusion in psychoanalysis. She shares insights from her interviews with older analysts, highlighting their generativity, resilience, and vision for the future of the field. The podcast explores the challenges of understanding long-term patients and the importance of relationships in the lives of aging analysts. Additionally, it delves into the concept of 'lifers' in psychoanalysis and the benefits of continued treatment for those who truly need it.

"What you are describing in the process of reading the book is what I am aspiring to which is a kind of deep emotional dialogue both in the book with the reader, but also in my work with the patient. I am more concerned with the experiential nature of our work and what it means to be with someone and the kinds of experiences that follow from a certain way of being with someone, than a focus on transference, and transference interpretation. Not that I think those aspects of our work are  unimportant, but I feel like what is foundational in even making transference interpretation is being tuned into the kind of shared emotional space and process.”    Episode Description: We begin with my experience of reading Henry’s new book which included my feeling imbalanced by his emphasis on the here-and-now personal characteristics of the analyst with less attention to the meaning that patients idiosyncratically bring to the analytic relationship. That said, I also felt changed by receiving his openness and vulnerability that he described in his clinical encounters. From there we began a conversation on 'authenticity' and 'presence'. We discussed analytic symmetry, intersubjectivity, sincerity, and what it means to 'surrender' to the analytic moment. Henry presented two distinct cases that demonstrate how he brings his authentic self to challenging clinical moments. We close with his sharing with us some of his personal history that has led him to this way of conceptualizing the work.    Our Guest: Henry Markman, MD is a Training & Supervising Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP), and Co-chair of Dialogues in Contemporary Psychoanalysis at SFCP. In 2021 he published the book, Creative Engagement in Psychoanalytic Practice by Routledge. Recent publications include: “A Pragmatic Approach to Bion’s Late Work. (JAPA 2015) ; "Presence, Mourning, Beauty: Elements of Analytic Process,” (JAPA 2017); The Good, the Bad, The Ugly, and the Dead: A Typology of Analytic Fields,” (fort da 2018); Accompaniment in Jazz and Psychoanalysis,” (Psychoanalytic Dialogues 2020); “Embodied Attunement and Participation" (JAPA 2020), and “One-sided Analysis Is No Longer Possible: The Relevance of “Mutual Analysis” in Our Current World”. (fort da 2021). Henry’s interests include modes of therapeutic action, embodied communication, the relevance of music in psychoanalysis, aesthetic experience, the emotional work of the analyst in the clinical encounter, and the development of a therapist. He is currently working on a manuscript entitled Five Uneasy Pieces: Five Psychoanalytic Articles that Changed My Mind. He is in private practice in Berkeley, where he consults and leads study groups.        Recommended Readings:  Berenstein, I. (2001) The Link and the Other. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 82: 141-149    Wilfred Bion: Los Angeles Seminars and Supervision. Seminar One. Bion, W., Aguayo, J., Malin, B. Routledge. 2013    Ferenczi, S. The Clinical Diary of Sandor Ferenczi. (J. Dupont, ed.) Harvard University Press. 1998    Malloch, S. & Trevarthen, C. (Eds.). (2009). Musicality: Communicating the Vitality and Interests of Life. In Communicative Musicality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.    Nacht. S. (1962) The Curative Factors in Psycho-Analysis. International Journal of Psycho-analysis 43: 206-211    Winnicott, D.W. (1968) Playing: Its Theoretical Status in the Clinical Situation. International Journal of Psycho-analysis 49: 591-599 

"The role that an analyst plays is so important in terms of how people can be wounded, shamed and hurt in a variety of different ways. We need to be very thoughtful about our own residual psychopathology because no analyst is perfectly analyzed. It’s a lifelong stretch that we are going through to try to figure out what is bothering us with a particular patient."    Episode Description: We begin by describing the nature of feeling 'stuck' in a clinical situation. We consider the contributions from both sides of the couch and the role that internal and actual consultants can play in reintroducing an analyzing perspective on an encounter. Glen presents composite examples of colleagues who came to him for consultation especially around difficulties with sexual boundaries with patients. He has noted the hunger for love and loneliness as common themes in these analysts' lives. We discuss changes in our field regarding the focus on symptoms and the use of Zoom and we conclude with a discussion of what he feels is a more nuanced understanding of the termination process.    Our Guest: Glen Gabbard, MD is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and a training and supervising analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston. He is the author or editor of 29 books, including Love and Hate in the Analytic Setting, Textbook of Psychoanalysis, Boundaries and Boundary Violations, and The Psychology of the Sopranos. He is also the author of 365 scientific papers. He was awarded the Sigourney Award in 2000 and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Sapienza University in Rome in 2021. From 2001-to 2007 he was Joint Editor-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.    Recommended Readings:  Gabbard GO: The “dragons of primeval days”: Termination and the persistence of the infantile. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 2021    Gabbard GO: The analyst and the virus. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 68, 1089-1099, 2021    2017—Sexual boundary violations in psychoanalysis: a 30-year retrospective. Psychoanalytic Psychology 34: 151-156. (Gabbard GO)    2010—The lure of the symptom in psychoanalytic treatment. JAPA 58:533-544 (Ogden TH & Gabbard GO)    2009—On Becoming a Psychoanalyst. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 90:311-327 (Gabbard GO, Ogden TH)    2003- Gabbard GO: Miscarriages of psychoanalytic treatment with suicidal patients. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 84:249-261 

"You can do as much about the legacy of the Holocaust - and what I took from my depressed mother who lost all her family in the Holocaust - there is only so much I could do in personal analysis and there was another bit that I could do only in a strange kind of dialogue in the presence of Germans doing their own work. It is: ‘do your own internal work in the presence of an other who is doing his/her internal work’."     Episode Description: We begin by learning about Mira's involvement in the origin of Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities (PCCA) 30 years ago. She shares with us the profound internal changes that occurred in both the Israeli and German analysts who came together and 'did their own work in the presence of the other'. She describes her ongoing consultative work with members of the Ukraine Psychoanalytic Society as they face terrible tragedies and uncertainties regarding their future. She advises humble respect for their need for psychological armor before recommending their encountering colleagues who are identified with the current aggressor. We close with her describing her pride in being Israeli and how it lives in her devotion to healing.    Our Guest: Mira Erlich-Ginor, M.A, is a training and supervising analyst, and faculty of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. She is deeply involved in psychoanalytic education and group relations work as well as serving as European representative for the IPA Board for two terms. Currently, she is Chair of the Steering Committee, IPA in the Community and the World. She has been co-director of the IPS psychotherapy track; chair of the education committee IPS, chair of the EPF (European Psychoanalytic Federation) Working Party on Education, Chair of Sponsoring Committee PSIKE, Turkey. She has also initiated and led several international research projects on psychoanalytic education among them is the End of Training Evaluation Project. She is committed to the application of psychoanalytic understandings to societal issues, co-founding the “Nazareth Project”- Group Relations work on transgenerational transmission of trauma as well as co-Founder, past chair, and member of OFEK – Israeli Group Relation organization. She is also Co-founder and in management of PCCA, Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities, recipient of the Sigourney Award 2019.    Recommended Readings:    Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities     Confronting Personal Trauma in a Group. The Sigourney Award    Beland, H. (2014) Collective Mourning - Who or What frees a Collective to Mourn. About First Step Out of the Most Malign Prejudice. In: Cyril Levitt, (Ed.): Hostile and Malignant Prejudice: Psychoanalytic Approaches. The International Psychoanalytical Association, Psychoanalytical Ideas and Application Series, Routledge, 2014.      Davids, M. F. (2013) “Tears are better than blood; words are better than tears”; can we address current ongoing conflict? In A. Varchevker & E. McGinley (Eds.), Enduring Migration through the Life Cycle (pp. 187–210). London: Karnac.    Erlich, H. S., Erlich-Ginor, M. & Beland, H. Fed with Tears – Poisoned with Milk. The "Nazareth" Group-Relations-Conferences: Germans and Israelis: The Past in the Present. Psychosozial Verlag: Gießen, 2009.    Erlich, H. S., Erlich-Ginor, M. & Beland, H. Gestillt mit Tränen – Vergiftet mit Milch. Die Nazareth-Gruppenkonferenzen: Deutsche und Israelis – Die Vergangenheit ist gegenwärtig. Psychosozial Verlag: Gießen, 2009.    Erlich, H. S., Erlich-Ginor, M. Beland H. (2009) Being in Berlin: A large group experience in the Berlin Congress, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 90.    Erlich-Ginor, M. (2013) Fed with Tears, Poisoned with Milk: The Way Out from Under the Shadows of the Holocaust. In: Varchevker, A. McGinley, E. (ed.): Enduring Migration: External and Internal Migration Through the Life Cycle. London: Karnac. 

“The father carries the separation function which is very important in terms of progressive differentiation from the mother rather than forceful opposition. It rests on something else that I think that we in psychoanalysis don’t take seriously enough - though Peter Blos did when he talked about the isogender attachment. The father also has to be an attracting object to the little boy - not just the separating object, but the attracting object. The little boy wants to desire the father and the love of the father - the whole homoerotic connection with the father, wrestling with the father, touching the father’s beard - all the beautiful sensual aspects of the male to male relationships that are inherent in the early dyadic father - son relationship.”     Episode Description: We begin by distinguishing analytic data from social and cultural theorizing. Michael walks us through the early history of psychoanalytic understandings of masculine development. He describes the ‘third wave’ of conceptualizations to which he contributed. This  recognizes the formative aspect of the mother’s relationship with her internalized masculinity and its reverberations towards her son. He discusses the challenge the little boy faces in acknowledging his gender difference from his mother, a task made more manageable by the dependable presence of his dyadically available father. He presents clinical material that demonstrates the power of the homoerotic transference/countertransference to “activate” a secure masculine identification. This grows into the discovery of “a man’s inherent receptivity” which he is careful to distinguish from female receptivity. We close with his sharing with us a bit of his personal history that has led him to be interested in this work.    Our Guest: Michael J. Diamond, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies. His major publications are on psychoanalytic technique and analytic mindedness; masculinity, femininity, and gender theory; fathering and the paternal function; trauma and dissociation; hypnosis and altered states; and group processes and social action. He has written five books including today’s featured book on Masculinity and Its Discontents: The Male Psyche and the Inherent Tensions of Maturing Manhood. His forthcoming book on applied psychoanalysis is Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times. His other major books include My Father Before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives My and an edited book on The Second Century of Psychoanalysis: Evolving Perspectives on Therapeutic Action (with Chris Christian). He has a full-time clinical practice in Los Angeles, California where he remains active in teaching, supervising, and writing.    Recommended Readings:    Blos, P. (1985). Son and Father: Before and Beyond the Oedipus Complex. New York: Free Press.    Corbett, K. (2009). Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.    Diamond, M. J. (2004). The Shaping of Masculinity: Revisioning Boys Turning Away from Their Mothers to Construct Male Gender Identity. Int. J. Psychoanal., 85:359–380.    Diamond, M. J. (2006). Masculinity Unraveled: The Roots of Male Gender Identity and the Shifting of Male Ego Ideals Throughout Life. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 54:1099–1130.    Diamond, M. J. (2007). My Father Before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives. New York: Norton.    Diamond, M. J. (2015). The Elusiveness of Masculinity: Primordial Vulnerability, Lack, and the Challenges of Male Development. Psychoanal. Q., 84:47–102.    Diamond, M. J. (2017). The Missing Father Function in Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique: The Analyst’s Internal Couple and Maturing Intimacy. Psychoanal. Q., 86:861–887.    Diamond, M. J. (2020). The Elusiveness of “The Feminine” in the Male Analyst: Living in Yet Not Being of the Binary. Psychoanal. Q.,89:503–526.    Diamond, M. J. (2021). Masculinity and Its Discontents: The Male Psyche and the Inherent Tensions of Maturing Manhood. London: Routledge.    Freud, S. (1905). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S. E., 7:130–243.    Friedman, R. C. & Downey, J. L. (2008). Sexual Differentiation of Behavior: The Foundation of a Developmental Model of Psychosexuality. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 56:147–175.    Glasser, M. (1985). The “Weak Spot”—Some Observations on Male Sexuality. Int. J. Psychoanal., 66:405–414.    Laplanche, J. (1997). The Theory of Seduction and the Problem of the Other. Int. J. Psychoanal., 78:653–666.    Lax, R. F. (1997). Boys’ Envy of Mother and the Consequences of This Narcissistic Mortification. Psychoanal. Study Child, 52:118–139.    Moss, D. (2012). Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Man: Psychoanalysis and Masculinity. London: Routledge.    Stoller, R. J. (1985). Presentations of Gender. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 

"I have some very close friends in Russia and some of them emigrated now and some of them are in Russia. Of course, I can speak with them very personally about my experience. I see how much guilt they feel and how much pressure they feel from both sides, from inside Russia and outside. For example, the first letter that our society received from one of the Russian psychoanalytic organizations was full of apologies. But after that Russian members asked us not to share this letter because they could be persecuted in Russia."     "[re Russian atrocities] it's absolutely a shocking experience that we were not able to expect. This absolutely wild hostility and cruelty from the Russian side. What you see on the internet is only part of it. Of course, if we speak with these people - raped women, injured children, tortured men – it is absolutely unbearable. We are shocked that the Russian army behaves in such a way - it is absolutely dehumanized behavior, bestial cruelty."    "For our country, it’s very important to feel solidarity now. We are very grateful to the States and to Britain who expressed their solidarity. Because several countries fell under Russian propaganda and still in some way hesitated about who is right and who is wrong. They say ‘it is not war it is only an Ukrainian conflict’, ‘there are both sides and all sides have their truths’. It is very painful for us to hear such things. I think resistance to Putin’s propaganda is very important support for us. To say truth about the situation, to say truth about this absolutely inhuman cruelty about this war  and to defend people here."     "Unfortunately, I see in many Western intellectual people who are missing an understanding of the situation. It is an absolutely unprovoked war. It is a very long war, because it started 8 years ago. Now it is only an acute stage of this war. But again and again I hear from my European colleagues that probably it is something that the Americans did, probably it is something that NATO did, it’s some political trick, and so on and so on. But these people use a great deal of denial to not see the absolutely cruel aggression of the imperialistic mind and an imperialistic society. These European intellectuals are like Stalin called “useful idiots” who supported Stalinism."