"Russians have suffered a lot," said Champion Teutsch, a self-help guru from Los Angeles who was in town in mid-March to train Russian psychologists in his particular method of mental pacification. "They are tough people, but with a lot of stoic resignation. I am throwing them a lifesaver, jarring them loose from the idea that life was meant to be a tragedy."
Teutsch's lifesaver is called genetic psychology: the study of how the bad things that happened to your ancestors affect your mental health. It has caught on quickly in Moscow and around the former Soviet Union, and a seminar was recently held in the capital dedicated to this approach to psychology. It was sponsored by Anatoly Naminach, a psychologist from Moscow who is head of a private counseling group called Sun Ray, which is loosely affiliated with the Moscow State University School of Psychology. Teutsch, however, was the spiritual force behind the event.
Teutsch, 73, claims to have treated movie and TV stars such as Gavin MacLeod, Jack Palance and Lou Gossett Jr., in addition to George Bush during the 1988 presidential campaign. According to Teutsch, the emotional effects of tragic, harmful things that happened in your family generations ago are transferred genetically -- in the actual DNA strands -- down to you. By locating and confronting the traumatic events in your family's past, Teutsch says, you can break the chain and feel better, simple as that.
Naminach and his group have been using Teutsch's methods to treat juvenile delinquents, drug addicts and chronically depressed individuals here in Moscow. An hour's session with a Sun Ray psychologist currently costs $50, although prices are going up. Naminach says that genetic psychology has in fact been effective here.
"His method is called an instrument of success in America," says Naminach. "That is exactly what we need in Russia now. People who believe in success." With Naminach's help, Teutsch's book "From Here to Greater Happiness" has come out in Russian, and the American is chairing quarterly seminars on genetic psychology in Moscow. His association with Sun Ray began last year, when one of Naminach's graduate students heard Teutsch speak at a symposium in Munich and convinced him to visit Russia.
The message has spread since the first seminar back in September. This time around, psychologists from as far away as Almaty came to learn from -- and be analyzed by -- Teutsch.
But what about Russia? Teutsch thinks Russians need psychological help more than other people. He says that for generations, Russians have been victims and that the time has come to alter that pattern. And Teutsch is confident that he can do that. Just give him an hour with Boris Yeltsin.
"The country is an extension of the man," Teutsch says. "So my help would not just affect Yeltsin, but the nation as a whole. The patterns of victimization were established long before Yeltsin, but I can change that."
Perhaps, but it might be a good idea to start the president off with a hot cup of tea.
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