5: Pandemic Psychodynamics in Russia with Irena Izotova

Our special guest today is Irena Izotova from Moscow, who will be sharing her thoughts and experience from a Russian perspective. Our conversation meanders through our experiences of the pandemic and we touch on how the 'Discourse of the Master' returns to impose prohibitions on us during the lockdown. This is something new to many in the west, but Irena points to this being historically familiar to Russians.   Irena relates how her elderly relative trangresses this prohibition as a refusal to submit once again to the prohibitions she experienced in her earlier life.  She also identifies the importance of arranging reflexive spaces both for leaders and for professionals who support them,  to keep their resilience and capacity to think and act maturely. We end the conversation by exploring how to live rather than survive, and how 'not to give up on our desire'.  Irena is an Executive &Team Coach and Organizational Consultant oriented by a psychodynamic approach.  She is President of Association of Psychoanalytic Coaching and Business Consulting, an Analytic-Network Registered Coach, Lecturer at HSE and a Lacanian psychoanalyst.   Enjoy this podcast!