Interview with Felix Kleyman, M.D.

Scope and content:

Dr. Kleyman is a great source of knowledge about the ins and outs of the Soviet mental health care system as the person who had about 10 years of professional experience on the ground. He talked about the uniqueness of his role during the American psychiatric mission to the U.S.S.R. that resulted from him being a native Russian speaker and being well familiar with life in the Soviet Union. Dr. Kleyman discusses the social and political context that surrounded the 1989 U.S. State Department visit and made it possible in the first place; the doctor patient relationship in the U.S.S.R.; Soviet diagnostic approaches and the role of Soviet psychiatrists during the American visit. Dr. Kleyman recalls his unique trip to Moscow Psychiatric Hospital # 5 to briefly speak with the patient who was claimed by the Soviets to have refused examination. He also talks about his experience as a member of the 1991 W.P.A. mission to the U.S.S.R.

Olena Protsenko, a Post-doctoral Research Associate in Psychiatry and Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, conducted this interview remotely over the Zoom application.

Biographical / historical:

Dr. Felix Kleyman is a psychiatrist practicing in New York City. At the time of the 1989 U.S. State Department mission to the Soviet Union to investigate abuse of psychiatry, Dr. Kleyman was an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College. Dr. Kleyman was one of the few Russian-speaking, U.S.S.R. and U.S.-trained psychiatrists on the American team. Dr. Kleyman was also a member of the 1991 W.P.A. mission to the Soviet Union once the All-Union Society of Psychiatrists and Narcologists was provisionally readmitted to the W.P.A.

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