CULTURAL BACKGROUND

Georgian Cultural Unconscious may be characterized by the multiplicity and tolerance. Striving for independence from time immemorial Georgia connected the East with the West as it was the shortest way for connection. The Great Silk Road is the popular name given to the system of caravan trade routes that lasted for many centuries and linked Eastern and Western civilizations between the Ancient and the Middle Ages. It was a source of merchandise and information, and the starting point of many conflicts and wars. Caravans laden with silk from China, spices and precious stones from India, silver goods from Iran, Byzantine clothes and many other goods moved through Georgia. Apparently that communication with different cultures has created openness to foreign cultures.

A rock of the Caucasus became the prison of Prometheus who dared defy the gods. The Georgians are defiant people. They suffered cruel times under Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Persian, Mongol, Turk and Russian subjugation. Subject to innumerable invasions, Georgians have maintained their unique language, script and religion, notwithstanding the many efforts to destroy these and other cultural treasures. Having being surrounded by powerful countries, which have rarely acted in a friendly manner and have made every effort to subject the Georgian people to an alien religion or ideology, Georgians remained open and tolerant to other cultures.

Jason and the Argonauts quested for the mythical Golden Fleece searching for a magical ram’s fleece. Jason arrived in Colchis (along the Black Sea coast of modern Georgia) to claim the fleece. Greeks must have been greatly impressed by the Colchis region of Georgia, for such stories to have been born.

 

Georgia was one of the first nations to embrace Christianity and has preserved its national identity throughout its turbulent history. The population is mostly Georgian (Eastern) orthodox, but other religious affiliations have traditionally had a presence here. Georgia is known world-wide for its religious and ethnic tolerance. Many different Christian churches, a Mosque and a Synagogue coexist peacefully in the center of the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi; there is even a small Jewish community who has been in Georgia since Cyrus the Great.

 

HYSTORY OF PSYCHOTHERAPY IN GEORGIA

During the Soviet Times the psychiatry was mainly based on the mechanical understanding of a human being and illness. The mental disease was regarded mainly as a result of disordered brain functioning and was considered only on somatic level. Psychiatry and psychotherapy were based on Pavlovian physiology. The personality of the patients, its individuality and socio-psychological aspects meant nothing at all. Depth psychology and psychoanalysis were rejected and even forbidden as being bourgeois.

Traditions of the Georgian psychiatry and psychology have been different from the above-mentioned approaches. Mikhail Asatiani, the founder of the Institute of Psychiatry put into practice psychoanalytical treatment. It is worth mentioning the contribution of the Georgian school of Psychology and its founder Dimitry Uznadze, who for the first time among soviet psychologists acknowledged and experimentally proved the ontological existence of unconscious mind and elaborated the so-called Theory of Set. According to him unconsciousness exists as a set.  Furthermore, Georgian psychotherapists, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists did not surrender themselves to the influence of totalitarian ideology and narrow-minded materialistic worldview. The conference dedicated to the problems of unconsciousness, held in Tbilisi in 1978, could serve as an example. This conference was attended by such famous scientists as: George H. Pollock  from Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Silvano Ariety from New York Medical College,  Roman Jacobson from Harvard University and the Massachusetts  Institutes of Technology, Didier Anzieu and Serge Leclaire from Paris University, Gunter Ammon from German Academy for Psychoanalysis and others.

After breaking down of totalitarian and authoritarian ideology appeared the possibility to integrate the western approaches based on Depth Psychology, to improve psychotherapeutic service including group psychotherapy in Georgia and to bring it closer to international standards.

The fulfillment of these tasks unites the members of the Georgian Group Psychotherapy Association founded in 2002. It is a voluntary, non-governmental, social-professional organization. It unites psychotherapists, clinical psychologists and a person of any other professions, who are interested in these sciences.