A.F. Lazursky’s Contribution to the Formation of the Petersburg (Leningrad) School of Psychotherapy: On the 150th Anniversary of His Birth

The article is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Aleksandr F. Lazursky (1874-1917), Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, an outstanding psychologist, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, the founder of the psychology of relations and author of the world’s first personality theory as well as the first domestic curriculum in clinical (medical) psychology. The author describes the main stages of the scientist’s development: training at the Military Medical Academy and an internship in psychology at leading European scientific centers; characterizes the scientific concept of ‘relation’, on the basis of which the scientist developed the world’s first psychological personality theory; and also shows that the psychology of relations of A.F. Lazursky is the basis of psychotherapeutic methods of the Petersburg (Leningrad) school of psychotherapy (represented by V.M. Bekhterev, V.S. Siegel, V.N. Myasishchev, B.D. Karvasarsky, A. A. Aleksandrov, V. Yu. Slabinsky and others).