Psychic Healing at the End of History

Years later, in his book Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State, Princeton professor Mark Beissinger would dub this era of the Soviet Union a period of “thickened history”—the final years of the Soviet era, in which “the pace of events . . . outstripped the movement of institutions and the understanding of leaders.” After at least twenty-five years practicing as a clinical psychotherapist, Kashpirovsky engaged in the ultimate pivot: he embraced his psychic abilities and used them to, supposedly, help the Soviet Union’s Olympic weightlifting team dominate the competition during the 1988 Summer Olympics. The “magic healer” of Soviet TV was far from an anomaly; indeed, Kashpirovsky was just one of many Soviet ekstrasensy—Russian for “psychics”—to take advantage of the newfound cultural freedom during glasnost.

Source: thebaffler.com