Обращение к делегатам съезда ЕФПП в Берлине.
Address to delegates of the EFPP Congress in Berlin.
Konstantin Siguta. Dnipro, Ukraine.
Dear colleagues,
Good evening! My name is Konstantin Siguta. I am from Dnipro, Ukraine. I am the Chairman of the UAPP (Ukrainian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy), which is a full Collective member of the EFPP working with adult patients. The second year of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war has begun.
Although the war broke out earlier, in 2014, we have been experiencing it in full since February 24, 2022.
Ukrainian society and we, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, are convinced that the long-term use of “denial” as a psychological defense leads to serious consequences which we are all experiencing. Our denial, as well as the denial of the Europeans, makes the Ukrainians pay a colossal price for their unwillingness to see and recognize ruscist hostility and the desire to seize foreign territories. A series of losses that the Ukrainians barely have the time to mourn and realize has been translated on to Europe and the whole world. The loss of the usual peaceful life, the destruction of our cities and homes, the loss of jobs, and most importantly, the death of people. It is especially difficult to witness the death of children. About 14 million Ukrainians left Ukraine in 2022. 5 million Ukrainians have lost their jobs. The Ukrainians who remained in the country are overwhelmed with the guilt of the survivor, the fears and anxieties of emigration. The Ukrainians who chose to stay, live in uncertainty, fear of regular air raids, blackouts, power and Internet connection cuts.
Over the first weeks of the war in 2022, my colleagues from the UAPP and I appealed to the leadership of the EFPP for help, to Maria Eugenia Sid, Hansjorg Messner, Cristina Calarasanu. We met online and it was decided that 2 of our Ukrainian organizations UAPP and APPU (headed by Taras Levin)
should unite in receiving financial support from the EFPP. The account that received financial assistance in 2022 belongs to our organization, to UAPP. All funds that came to this account were divided equally between UAPP and APPU.
In 2022, EFPP members transferred 17,637 euro to our organizations. We are endlessly grateful to our colleagues from Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Estonia and Turkey! A significant number of our members from Kharkov, Kramatorsk, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhya lost their homes and
jobs.
Thanks to your financial assistance, we were able to provide material support to 5 needy members of the organization in the amount of 450 euro each. We supported financially 4 of our members who serve in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the amount of 600 euro each. Our pregnant members of the organization received 400 euro each. We have been able to provide free training for a year according to the EFPP standards to 40 young members of the organization to help them maintain their professional identity (4808 euro in total). We organized courses on crisis psychological help for
our members of the organization who decided to volunteer psychological help.
We also run regular supervision and Balint groups for our members. Recurrent rocket attacks, scheduled and emergency power outages, shutdowns of water, heat, and the Internet. All this created the atmosphere of great tension out of uncertainty, anxiety, fears, exhaustion, sleep disturbances, mood swings, depressive states. All these complex emotional states in which our patients and psychotherapists find themselves have united us. But we, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, must serve as islands of stability, hope and containment for our patients. Of course, it is extremely difficult to work
in such conditions, exhaustion and burnout quickly set in. But the realization that we are not alone in this war, thanks to your collegial, emotional, material support, helps us to hold on. Realizing that our Ukrainian people are dying, defending not only their territory and civil rights, but also the freedom and values of all of Europe, stopping the ruscists from further usurpation of European countries.
We are very grateful to the Board of EFPP Maria Eugenia Sid, Hansjorg Messner, Cristina Calarasanu and all our colleagues who support us and we hope will continue to support us in this difficult but necessary fight for freedom and European values.
Konstantin Siguta. Dnipro, Ukraine.
