Good evening!

I would like to congratulate everyone on our meeting today, during the war, that we have united for unity, support, and the future. Thank you for the opportunity to be with you!

I would like to start with the words of my grandmother – her key wish was: “May there never be a war!” Then, I didn’t understand her…
Now I will be the grandmother who says, “May there never be a war!” Now I understand her!

The war started in Ukraine at 4 o’clock in the morning.  We are all aware of these infamous parallels.
The war came to us instead of the dawn, at 4 am we heard missile explosions, air strikes woke up Kyiv and the entire country. Death was coming across the border riding vehicles marked with the swastikas.
Where russian soldiers passed, they left the trace of mass graves of civilians.
229 children – these are only those registered – have been killed by russian soldiers. More than 5 million refugees have left Ukraine – mostly women and children.  As of May 10, 15,657 crimes against Ukraine were registered, including 10,619 crimes of aggression and war crimes.
More than two thousand missiles have hit our land, dozens of cities have been razed to the ground, villages have been burned. Everybody knows who is to blame!!!
Killing, killing, and killing again, covering Europe with corpses – this is the goal of the russian federation.
But we know – the Enantiodromy principle works!
 As our President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “There is no bunker to hide from God.”
Freedom, unity, resilience, and justice – these are values of the Ukrainian nation, and they will prevail!

Winston Churchill said:  “If you are going through hell, keep going.”
This message is very relevant right now, because we are halfway there, it is important for us to stick to the “middle way” between Scylla and Charybdis, in different senses of the phrase: the military, political, and human ones.  And as Jungians, we need to keep the balance – between action and consciousness, between the external position and internal dialog.

Jung was extremely intuitive. Sharp intuition helped him sense the shift in the collective consciousness in advance, he wrote about activation of the Apocalypse archetype and recognized that the Apocalypse archetype had a place and was active in our collective unconscious. The war is its main presentation.
Jung felt that it was important for people to know about that archetype because he recognized the power that each individual has to change the future.
Right now, the “Jungian mission” is for a sufficient number of people to realize the apocalypse as an archetype, understand its intentions, and explore its implications in their personal lives, then the fate of the world may turn out more positive.

Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation are losing a lot: lives, homes, lands, our “old universe has been destroyed”; but these losses give us the hope to undergo renewal and healing, to gain new strength and spirituality. I believe that this is not only Ukraine’s path towards another inner reality that is more in line with our spirit and the “new ethics”, it is an opportunity for the entire world to renew! This war is an impetus for the Great Transformation! 

As Jungians, in our offices, we keep working to heal the world, strengthen peace, and reconcile the struggle of opposites. We help people do their inner work by realizing that all true changes that transform the reality at a fundamental level start with individuals – you and me – and it’s up to us, it all starts with individual responsibility.  

I believe that it is this desire for personal contribution, “spiritual cause” that has gathered us all here today, as the knights of the Round Table, to direct our civilization towards the good and full realization of human potential through our individuation efforts.  

We, Ukrainian analysts, are working hard because we have many years of training, knowledge and willingness to support analysands, supervisees, colleagues, and students. From the first day of the war, the UJA has been holding support, reflection groups, training webinars, seminars in both public and closed formats, Jungian analysts from all over the world have joined our cause, and we do not stop!

This act of solidarity and support was instantly provided to us by the IAAP and dozens of national societies.
Today’s meeting is a large container for the Great Anxiety and sorrow.
We are sincerely grateful to our British colleagues for their great work and support provided today!  

Also, as a professional Jungian association in Ukraine, we understand that professional challenges are huge and significant. “How to be an analyst during the war? How does the analytical frame change in the war? How to comprehend this all and not lose one’s mind?”
Because the Trauma is greater than any kind of competence, it is filling everything around us.
This is why us – the 10 UJA member analysts – work continuously with colleagues in the format of reflective groups and mini-seminars to do together the important work of reflecting, containing, and discovering new answers and meaning.
We truly thank Toshio Kawai, Misser Berg, Batia Brosh Palmoni, Gražina Gudaitė, Tom Kelly, Henry Abromovich, Warren Coleman, Jan Wiener, Martin Schmidt for the regular and consistent support you are providing to our community.
Because as Bion said: “It takes two minds to make sense of the most disturbing thoughts.”  The international community is now giving the Ukrainian community the “second mind” to make senses, and today this great circle of solidarity is also a “second mind” for our common transformation.

 Finally, trauma and healing it is a hard process.
Trauma is a journey to Hell, a descent to the underworld, desolate Nigredo, hellish torments and lifelong tortures – these are the metaphors the subconscious offers to us to come in touch with the pain. Our analytical work today is full of these images. Jung said, “God of terror lives in the human soul,” and we, Ukrainian analysts, are now well familiar with him…

But here is another side to the Trauma. A trauma constellates the archetype of Initiation, a trauma can launch initiation of the sacred, spiritual potential in an individual.
Healing is a fragile balance of Pain and Meaning. New integrity. “Development and destruction are parts of the same curve” (Jung).

Now it is our long way to healing. We have the faith and hope to discover intuitive wisdom and trust in life to make our quantum leap as a Ukrainian society and a breakthrough into the deeper paradox of life as individuals.

Every time I ask the question – what helps us? I believe that we unconsciously cling to our inner values, our Central Axis, they are what keeps life within the psyche. The axis of transcendence is the mast of Odysseus in the stormy sea of life.
And everyone has their own axis.  We, Ukrainians, hold on to our “Mast/Axis” – it’s freedom, unity, resilience, and justice! 

Thank you so much for standing abreast!
Inna Kyryliuk, President of the Ukrainian Jungian Association, UJA.