Report "May there never be war!"

Good evening!

I want to greet everyone on our meeting, today, during the war, we have come together for unity, support, and the future. Thank you for the opportunity to be with you!

I would like to begin with the words of my grandmother – her main wish was: "May there never be war again!" Back then, I didn't understand her… Now I will also be a grandmother who says: "May there never be war again!" Now I understand her!

The war began in Ukraine in the morning, at 4 a.m. We all know these shameful parallels. War came to us instead of dawn; at 4 a.m. we heard explosions of missiles, airstrikes woke up Kyiv and the entire country. Death crossed the border in vehicles bearing a swastika. Wherever a Russian soldier went, mass graves of civilians were left behind. Officially registered, 229 children 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 have been registered, including 10,619 crimes of aggression and war crimes. More than two thousand missiles have struck our land, dozens of cities have been razed to the ground, villages burned. Everyone knows who is to blame for this!!!

To kill, kill, and kill again, to sow Europe with corpses – that is the goal of the Russian Federation. But we know that the principle of Enantiodromia works! As our president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: "There is no bunker deep enough to hide from God." Freedom, unity, resilience, and justice – these are the values of the Ukrainian people, and they will prevail!

Winston Churchill said: "If you're going through hell, keep going." This message is very apt right now, because we are halfway there; it is important for us to hold the "middle path" between Scylla and Charybdis in various senses of this expression: militarily, politically, and humanly. And as Jungians, we need to maintain a balance – between action and consciousness, between the external stance and the inner dialogue.

Jung was extraordinarily intuitive. Sharp intuition helped him sense the shift in collective consciousness in advance; he wrote about the activation of the Apocalypse archetype and acknowledged that the Apocalypse archetype exists and is active in our collective unconscious. War is its main presentation. Jung felt it was important for people to know about this 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 recognize the apocalypse as an archetype, understand its intentions, and integrate its meaning into their personal lives; then the fate of the world may be more positive.

Ukraine and the Ukrainian people are losing so much: lives, homes, land, our "old universe is destroyed," but these losses give us hope to experience renewal and healing, to gain new strength and spirituality. I believe that this is not only Ukraine's path to a different inner reality, one more in line with our spirit and the "new ethics"; this is an opportunity for the whole world to renew itself! This war is a catalyst for the Great Transformation!

As Jungians, in our consulting rooms we work tirelessly for the healing of the world, the strengthening of peace, and the reconciliation of the clash of opposites. We help people do their inner work, understanding that all true changes that transform reality at a fundamental level begin with individual people, with you and me, and depend on us – everything begins with personal responsibility.

In my opinion, it is precisely this striving for personal contribution, this "spiritual calling," that has gathered us all here today, like the Knights of the Round Table, so that through our individual efforts toward individuation, we may steer our civilization toward goodness and the full realization of human potential.

We, Ukrainian analysts, work hard because we have many years of training, knowledge, and readiness to support analysands, supervisees, colleagues, and students. From the first day of the war, the Ukrainian Jungian Association has been holding support groups, reflective groups, educational webinars, seminars, both in open and closed formats; Jungian analysts from around the world have joined our cause, and we are not stopping!

This act of solidarity and support was immediately shown by the IAAP and dozens of national societies. Today's meeting is a great container for Great Anxiety and Misfortune.
We are deeply grateful to our English colleagues for their immense work and support, especially today!

Also, as a professional Jungian association in Ukraine, we realize that the professional challenges are significant and substantial: "How to be an analyst during war? How does the analytic frame change in war? How to make sense of it all and not lose one's mind?" Because Trauma is greater than any kind of competence; it fills everything around us. Therefore, we, the 10 analyst members of the UJA, constantly work with colleagues in reflective groups and mini-seminars, so that together we can do the important work of making sense, containing, and finding new answers and meanings. We sincerely thank Toshio Kawai, Misser Berg, Batia Brosh Palmoni, Gražina Gudaitė, Tom Kelly, Henry Abramovitch, Warren Colman, Jan Wiener, and Martin Schmidt for the regular and consistent support you provide to our community. Because as Bion said: "To think the most disturbing thoughts, two minds are needed." The international community is now providing the Ukrainian community with a "second mind" for making sense of things, and today this great circle of solidarity is also a "Second Mind" for our shared transformation.

And finally, trauma and its healing are a difficult process. Trauma is a journey into Hell, a descent into the underworld, a bleak nigredo, infernal torments, and eternal torture. These are the metaphors the unconscious gives us to touch pain. Our analytic work today is filled with these images. Jung said: "The God of terror dwells in the human soul," and we, Ukrainian analysts, are now well acquainted with that…

But there is another side to Trauma. Trauma constellates the archetype of Initiation; trauma can be an initiation into the sacred, spiritual potential within a person. Healing is the fragile balance between Pain and Meaning. A new wholeness. "Development and destruction are part of the same curve" (Jung).

We now face a long road to healing. We have faith and hope to find intuitive wisdom and trust in life, to make our quantum leap as a Ukrainian society and a breakthrough to the deeper paradox of life as individuals.

I always wonder: what helps us? I believe we unconsciously hold onto inner values, our Central Axis; it is these that sustain life within the psyche. The axis of transcendence is Odysseus's mast on the stormy sea of life.
Every person has their own. We Ukrainians hold onto our "Mast-Axis" – freedom, unity, resilience, and justice!

Thank you sincerely for being with us!
Inna Kyryliuk, President of the Ukrainian Jungian Association, UJA.