The Ministry of Education and Science rejected the training program for psychologists working with Northern Military District veterans

As Kommersant learned, the Ministry of Education and Science abandoned the scandalous training program for psychologists working with veterans of the Northern Military District. The document provided for 71 hours of lectures on “traditional values” and “mental wars waged against every citizen of the Russian Federation by unfriendly countries” – and only one hour on the psychological consequences of “moral or immoral behavior in war.” A source in the ministry told Kommersant that the official who sent this program to universities has already been fired.

Last week, the media drew attention to the new university discipline “Spiritual Security of the Individual and Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values.” It was officially published in the database of federal state educational standards for higher education (FSES). Its developer was the Scientific and Practical Institute of Religious-Oriented Psychology and Psychotherapy (created in 2023 as an organization of additional education).

In the accompanying documents, the need for a new academic discipline was explained by the consequences of SVO. It stated that the Defenders of the Fatherland state foundation no longer has enough clinical specialists “to meet the needs of veterans and family members of deceased SVO participants in receiving psychological assistance.” Therefore, the foundation decided to attract “psychologists who carry out individual labor activities in the market of psychological services.” But it turned out that among them there are “psychologists-energy therapists, psychologists-astrologers, psychologists-tarologists” who “use techniques that do not have a scientific basis, are pseudoscientific and occult in nature.” The authors of the program also mentioned a certain “survey of graduates of a number of psychological departments of educational organizations.” It showed that “approximately 40% of graduates adhere to values ​​that are opposite to traditional Russian spiritual and moral family values” (the document does not indicate who conducted this survey or when).

As a result, the shortage of “military” psychologists became a matter at the federal level. As the document says, on September 13, 2023, this problem was discussed at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova. It was decided to “develop criteria for selecting psychologists” for veterans and family members of deceased SVO participants. Also, “the question was raised about the spiritual, including moral and psychological, safety of these persons.” The authors of the program believe that they managed to solve these problems – and even more.

The preamble of the document states that states “unfriendly” to Russia are waging “an active ideological and information-psychological war aimed at destroying traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.” Therefore, the curriculum is designed to ensure “the spiritual and moral development of future psychologists in the spirit of all-Russian civic identity based on traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.” Moreover, the authors believe that psychologists should “translate” these values ​​to clients and patients, “thus participating in the dissemination of the correct values ​​in our country.” They should also help “make moral choices in interpersonal relationships and during intrapersonal conflict, focusing on the foundations of spiritual security and traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”

The course program consists of two sections. The first – “Spiritual safety of the psychologist and the client (patient) during their interaction” – lasts 36 academic hours. During this time, students had to study the concepts of “spirit, spirituality, spiritual attitude, spiritual knowledge, spiritual health, spiritual heredity, spiritual threat, spiritual security.” They also had to learn that “spiritual security is an integral part of national security.” It was also planned to tell future psychologists how “the doctrine of the soul was replaced by the doctrine of the psyche.” The subsection “Spiritual threats to human health” touched on the events of recent history: “Spiritual, mental wars waged by unfriendly countries against Russian citizens by promoting alien spiritual values, primarily religious ones. An example of this is Ukraine.” It also mentioned “psychics, fortune tellers, astrologers, numerologists” and “trance, manipulative, occult, scientifically unsubstantiated and pseudoscientific techniques used by psychologists in their work.” Finally, it was concluded that “high spirituality is the main factor in maintaining mental health and psychological well-being.”

The section “Traditional Russian spiritual and moral values ​​as a foundation in the work of a psychologist with clients (patients)” was also planned to be given 36 training hours. It mentioned, for example, “Grand Duke Vladimir as an example of the transformation of an immoral person into a highly moral one as a result of the adoption of Christian spiritual values.” Students were also required to study “historical examples of the retreat of peoples from traditional spiritual and moral values ​​and their consequences – both positive (acceptance of Christianity) and negative (the Flood, Sadom and Gomorrah (as in the text.— “Kommersant”), modern Ukraine).

Only one lesson was allocated directly to SVO in the program. Based on its results, the psychologist must learn to “consider the health problems of combatants from the point of view of moral or immoral behavior in war.” This topic was mentioned again in the “client cases” section. There, students were presented with a situation where a soldier’s mother comes to the reception: “She received news of the death of her son in the Northern Military District. The son died as a result of being hit by a shell; practically nothing remained of the body, but the death was confirmed by witnesses. The mother does not believe that her son is dead, she is not going to bury the “remains of a stranger” and wants to go look for her son.” There are other educational cases: a Muslim groom demands that the bride convert to Islam; a pregnant woman finds out about her husband’s infidelity and wants to have an abortion; A Christian baker refuses to bake a cake for a “young gay couple.”

The authors of the program are the president of the Scientific and Practical Institute of Religious-Oriented Psychology and Psychotherapy, Monk Cyprian (Valery Burkov – Hero of the USSR, Afghan veteran, member of the supervisory board of the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation) and the director of the institute, Anna Gladkova (deputy head of the Heroes of the Fatherland Foundation). A Kommersant correspondent tried to get a comment from the monk Cyprian. However, he did not answer most of the questions asked, expressing concern that he, the reader and the correspondent may have different meanings in the concepts of “psyche” and “mental and spiritual health”. And to the question “Can we say that there is currently a shortage of psychologists who are able to work with the families of SVO participants and the participants themselves, or is there a lack of well-qualified specialists in principle?” Monk Cyprian said: “The answer is affirmative.”

At the end of November 2023, the Ministry of Education and Science sent a letter to the heads of specialized universities with program materials. But now the ministry’s press service has assured Kommersant that the letter is not a normative act and is of a recommendatory nature. “Universities have the right to independently decide whether to include or not include a module in educational programs, taking into account the focus of educational programs and the specifics of the specific area of ​​students’ future professional activities,” they emphasized.

A Kommersant source in the Ministry of Education and Science made it clear that the department “remained dissatisfied” with the implementation of the order, and the program itself was “prepared at a low level.” Nevertheless, the official document sent to universities “needed” to be published on the Federal State Educational Standards website, explains Kommersant’s interlocutor. He assured that the official responsible for sending out the letter had already been dismissed from the department. The published document bears the signature of the acting director of the department of state policy in the field of higher education of the Ministry of Education and Science Alexey Levchenko; Kommersant was unable to obtain his comment.

According to Kommersant’s interlocutor, the ministry is already working on creating another program, but it will take “quite a lot of time.” However, Roman Demyanchuk, associate professor of the Department of Educational Psychology and Pedagogy at St. Petersburg State University, doubts that this is even necessary. According to him, after the announcement of the presidential decree in 2022 on the protection of “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values,” all programs for training psychologists were checked for compliance with these values. “And it turned out that all of them previously corresponded to those specified (in the decree.— “Kommersant”) ideas. This is a basic concept of what is good and what is bad, which has always been in psychology,” the expert assures. “Consulting specialists work with problems and deviations from the perception of the world in a positive way and with the desire to commit evil.” The psychologist suggested that the topic of spiritual and moral values ​​in the program of work with combat veterans arose “due to some kind of overlap, because there is no point in discussing and connecting these positions separately.” Mr. Demyanchuk also noted that psychologists are already taught to work with people with traumatic experiences: “There are no special schemes for working specifically with participants of the SVO, these are classical mechanisms.” However, specialists trained in clinical or crisis psychology, as a rule, have more in-depth competencies in this matter, the expert stipulates.

Polina Yachmennikova, Alexander Chernykh