I just returned from a trip to Ukraine. I was part of a larger team that was there to train pastors in basic skills of counseling and more advanced skills associated with trauma care and sexual issues. The team I took taught all morning for the week we were there and then did several activities in the afternoon to get better acquainted with the city. We taught on sexual issues in counseling based on a textbook I had co-authored with Erica S. N. Tan. That book was actually sponsored by several organizations to be translated into Russian before our trip, so that students could get the most out of it. That was exciting to see.
We also participated in a conference on sexuality at one of the prestigious universities in Kiev on Saturday and Sunday. I offered a plenary address on some of the changes in approaches to sexual minorities over the years (kind of updating a 2002 publication that created a typology of sorts around this topic) and the convergence of the APA’s position on client-affirmative care and Sexual Identity Therapy. I also conducted a workshop on SIT in individual and in group therapy contexts. The co-director of the institute gave another plenary address and students led workshops on body image and female sexual addiction, as well as poster sessions on recent empirical work we have been doing. It was an extraordinary 11 days to be honest with you.
I thought I might offer a few reflections on my time there. My thoughts are a bit scattered today, however, so this may be of little use to anyone. I’ve never taught using a translator. That was an extraordinary experience. I’ve taught while someone signed my class to a deaf student, but I had not taught in another language and had to work out the pace of teaching and allowing for translation. You get roughly 1/2 of the time to move through the material. I learned quite a bit about my lack of patience.
It was also striking to me how hungry people are in Ukraine for training. You can forget that they are at war right now, and that any training that helps them, any training that is practical and skills-based can be immediately of help to them. We tried to keep things very practical. In fact, I turned more toward clinical demonstrations of skills toward the end of the week (whereas I had been more lecture-based and theory oriented toward the beginning of the week).
Mark Yarhouse 