Abstract: In 1990 in Belgrade, at one of the first East European Psychoanalytical seminars, I met Aurelia Ionescu, a colleague from Bucharest. During a lengthy discussion about the situation in Romania, she also told me how risky it was to perform psychotherapeutic sessions during the Ceausescu regime. At times, patients and psychotherapists even had to check for hidden microphones in the room. I asked her: «But was it worth risking so much for a psychotherapeutic session? » The answer was: “We should do it to feel alive, to do something different from what was ‘politically correct’ and imposed”. Perhaps this is one reason behind the tremendous interest in psychoanalysis that Westerns encountered in Eastern Europe immediately following 1989.
Rom J Psychoanal 2020, 13(2):131-156
DOI: 10.2478/rjp-2020-0020
