SOVIET PSYCHOPHARMACOTHERAPY IN THE CONTEXT OF SCIENTIFIC VIEWS OF V.A. GILYAROVSKIJ

Demyanov Gleb Valerevich

In the 1940s-1950s Professor Vasilij Alekseevich Gilyarovskij (1876-1959), a recognised authority on the treatment of mental illnesses, became the leading Soviet psychiatrist. Gilyarovskij's attitude to practically all treatment methods used in Soviet psychiatry is covered in Gilyarovskij's textbook «Psychiatry» (the last, fourth, edition – 1954), in numerous monographs and publications of the scientist, and in modern historiography. However, V.A. Gilyarovskij's attitude to the appearance of the first psychotropic drugs in the USSR, which in 1954 began the age of psychopharmacotherapy in Soviet psychiatry, remains undisclosed. On the basis of V.A. Gilyarovskij's personal archive from the State Archive of the Russian Federation the article analyses those special features of psychopharmacological treatment that contributed to the acceptance of this method of therapy by Gilyarovskij. The conclusions are drawn taking into account the transformation of the scientist's views on the etiopathogenesis and treatment of mental illnesses.

Keywords:psychopharmacotherapy; psychotropic drugs; Soviet psychiatry; I.P. Pavlov's inhibitory concept; somatopsychic concept; V.A. Gilyarovskij.