Counseling on the front line: Insights from a Ukrainian doctor

ABSTRACT

In this essay, Oleksandr Fedorets reports his experience of counseling veterans of combat, both in the current invasion and in the Maidan revolution of 2013–2014. Doctor Fedorets eschews the notion of a neutral analytic “third position,” in wartime scenarios, in favor of a more humanitarian, trauma-informed “bearing witness” as discussed by Israeli and other analytic communities. The author reminds us that the stakes could not be higher, offering clinical vignettes both hopeful and catastrophic.

KEYWORDS:

• Invasion
• neutrality
• phobia
• PTSD
• third
• trauma
• Ukraine
• wartime
• witness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Oleksandr Fedorets

Oleksandr Fedorets a psychiatrist by education, with experience in the field of addiction therapy as a narcologist. He has worked psychoanalytically in private practice since 2005. He is a training and supervising analyst with the Ukrainian Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (UKPP), itself a member of the European Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (ECPP). He is co-founder of the International Association of Addiction Psychotherapy, and the author of several articles published in the Ukrainian psychotherapeutic magazine, “Forum”. Since 2014 he has participated in volunteer crisis psychotherapy, and currently leads supervision groups for crisis counseling.