Visit by Italian Jungian psychoanalysts

From September 13 to 17, a series of unique open lectures and discussions was held with leading representatives of the contemporary analytical direction in psychology — Luigi Zoja and Eva Pattis-Zoja.

Luigi Zoja is a clinical analyst of the Jungian school, former president of the Italian Center for Analytical Psychology (CIPA) and the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP), visiting professor at Beijing Normal University and the University of Macau. He is the author of numerous works translated into 15 languages. Luigi’s book “The History of Pride: Psychology and the Limits of Development” has been published in Ukrainian.

Eva Pattis-Zoja is a clinical psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst, a lecturer at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich and many international centers, the author of books on sandplay therapy, and the founder of the International Association for Expressive Sandplay Therapy (IAES). Since 2015, Eva has been supporting the Expressive Sandwork project in Ukraine, where she is a teacher and author of this method.

It was a diverse, very intense, and fruitful collaboration with psychologists in several cities in Ukraine. Open lectures were held, organized in cooperation with the Ukrainian Catholic University and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Luigi Zoja gave lectures on:

“Paranoia: archetypal and historical, individual and collective, past and present” in Lviv
“Analytical Ethics in Wartime: When Transference, Identification, and Empathy Are Predominantly Collective” in Kyiv.

Eva Pattis-Zoja gave lectures on:

“Spontaneous symbolic play in children as a self-regulating tendency of the psyche” in Lviv
“How to talk to parents if their child is undergoing therapy” in Kyiv

Four hundred seventy-four participants registered for the lectures, and nearly 200 people were able to attend live in both offline and online formats. The lectures are also available as recordings.

As part of the collaboration between the Professional Association of Children’s Analytical Psychologists and the NaUKMA Mental Health Center, Luigi and Eva conducted face-to-face individual and group supervision sessions in Lviv, Kyiv, and Vorzel. Eva conducted in-depth and inspiring work with Expressive Sandwork teams from Lviv, Drohobych, Truskavets, Kyiv, Vorzel, and Zaporizhzhia. Fifty psychologists who provide free assistance to children, women who have experienced loss, and veterans using the Expressive Sandwork method participated in the supervision of cases from Sandwork projects. We discussed children’s play, trust, protection, resistance, genuine presence, and the healing process, considering both inspiring stories and complex cases that required solutions.

There was also an in-person seminar for PAChAP and child therapists with Eva on “The Role of the Unconscious in Cancelled Sessions,” where we explored the topic of setting and challenging situations in practice. Several clinical vignettes were presented.

PAChAP sincerely thanks everyone who contributed to the organization of the visit: the team of the Department of Psychology and Psychotherapy of UCU – Iryna Semkiv, Oksana Zakharko, Tetiana Timkiv; the team of the Mental Health Center of NaUKMA and the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy of NaUKMA – Serhiy Bogdanov, Viktoria Solovyova, Volodymyr Chernobrovkin, Yaroslava Naimushina; PAChAP colleagues – Oksana Pyvovarova, Lyudmila Romanenko, Iryna Zhadik—sincere thanks to all the translators who contributed to the translation of the events.

An incredible experience of care, professional support, and intellectual satisfaction. To be continued…