20 July 2020

Tatjana Pushkaryeva

(1955-2020)

As EPF Executive we are very sad to announce that our highly appreciated colleague Dr. Tatjana Pushkaryeva, member of the Ukrainian Psychoanalytic Society, has died in a tragic accident July 2020.

The EPF owes Tatjana Pushkaryeva a lot, because she was a pioneer of psychoanalysis in Ukraine, both for adults and as well for children and adolescents. And she was also a committed lecturer for the dissemination of psychoanalysis especially in Eastern Europe within the framework of the European Psychoanalytic Institute (EPI). In her commitment for the dissemination and promotion of psychoanalysis she has earned great merits.  But this did not pertain only to Eastern Europe: at the 2019 EPF conference in Madrid she contributed to the Parent Infant Workshop and during this conference she also celebrated with us the start of the EPI training programme for child- and adolescent psychoanalysis. As part of this programme, she was activ at the 5th annual EPI integration conference in Paris July/August 2019. Her passing is a painful and sad loss for us.

In the following you will find an honourable obituary, written by Paolo Fonda, Italy:

It is with great sorrow that I write of the passing of my beloved wife, Tatjana Pushkaryeva (Kiev, Ukraine), who died on 5.7.2020 in an accident in the Alps.

She was Russian, graduated in Medicine in Stavropol, and worked as a General and Child Psychiatrist. In 1986 she moved to Kiev where, as Doctor of Medical Sciences, she became Scientific Chief of the Centre of Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy at the Institute of Pediatrics, Obstetrics, and Gynecology of the Ukrainian National Academy of Medical Sciences. She was also a member and representative in Ukraine for the World Association for Infant Mental Health.

She was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Ukraine and one of the key organizers for several PIEE Schools as well as for the remarkable EPF East European Seminar in 2000 on a ship that sailed along the river Dnepr. On this occasion, people from the West and the East and the IPA and EPF Presidents laid the foundations for the further development of psychoanalysis and systematic training in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe. Most of her training took place in Switzerland, and in 2007 she became one of the first two IPA Members in Ukraine, and a few years later was one of the founding members of the Ukrainian IPA Study Group.

As Training Analyst, she dedicated herself to the preparation and teaching of candidates of the newly born Study Group, but she also taught at several PIEE seminars, including the most recent EPI School-2019 in Paris. She was also a founding member of the Ukrainian Association of Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy (EFPP) and furthermore, she sought to enrich and broaden the professional education of analysts and psychotherapists, as she considered this essential to strengthen the position of psychoanalysis in the environment. She translated several analytic books and papers from English to Russian and regularly organized seminars in Kiev with renowned Western analysts. She was Teacher and Supervisor of Infant Observation Programs according to the Tavistock Clinical Model and introduced the Parent-Infant Psychotherapy following the A.Freud Centre method. She taught also at the Slovenian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Society (EFPP) in Ljubljana.

Her analysands, supervisees, students, and colleagues greatly appreciated her dedication, professionalism, wisdom, empathy and warmth.

Paolo Fonda, Trieste, Italy

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