The post-Soviet psychoanalysts lacked the central qualification of their profession: they had not themselves gone through analysis. A number of psychoanalysts in Germany, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands began taking on the role of analyst and supervisor for the Russians, who would travel to their supervisors’ cities for a few weeks at a time to undergo analysis, while their own patients were on hold, to return and pick up their work and receive supervision over e-mail.
