Semjon Leonidovich Uglev

Does this sound familiar?

Many of the people who come to me carry feelings that are hard to put into words. If even one of these rings true — you are in the right place.

• "I live in a new country, yet I feel like a ghost." Everything seems to be in place: work, housing, daily life. And yet there is no ground — as if you were watching your own life from the outside.
• Longing not for a place, but for the person you used to be. There is nowhere to go back to — or no desire to — and staying feels unbearable. You are mourning not only a country, but the version of yourself that stayed behind there.
• Anxiety that never lets go. Documents, status, money, fear of making a mistake — and the sense that your whole life rests on assumptions one stamp or one phone call could take away.
• Relationships that didn't survive the move. A couple split apart by a border. Children growing up "differently than ours". Old friends drifting away, new ones not yet your own.
• A life on hold. Years spent on survival and adaptation, while career, creativity, love and meaning stay paused.
• Invisible grief. Loved ones you cannot visit. Farewells that never happened. Funerals you couldn't attend. A country and a language that now exist mostly in your phone.
• "Who am I now, anyway?" A question that keeps you up at night — one no passport and no résumé can answer.

All of this is a normal response for someone whose life has changed more radically than for most people around them. And it is something that can be worked with.

What I work with

The concerns of people living far from home are often particular. But behind them stand ordinary human themes — simply in an unfamiliar and often painful context.

Faith and meaning

For many people far from home, faith becomes one of the few supports that remain. For others, it is the move itself that makes them look anew at faith, church, guilt, meaning and their own path.

I treat these themes with care. In therapeutic work I do not try to convince anyone what to believe, and I do not turn a conversation about pain into a sermon. But if faith, doubt, prayer, guilt or the search for meaning are part of your life, we can speak about them openly — without having to explain everything from the beginning.

Theological and spiritual background

• Theological education and academic publications in theology.
• Many years of church ministry and pastoral accompaniment.
• Familiarity with the spiritual tradition, the practice of prayer, and the questions of guilt, forgiveness, loss and the search for meaning.

How this works in therapy

• Therapy remains therapy. I respect your beliefs, your path, and your right not to talk about faith if the subject does not matter to you.
• Spiritual topics only at your request. I do not start conversations about God myself, and I do not use a session for religious instruction.
• If faith matters to you, it has a place here. We can speak about it in a language close to you — without oversimplification and without trying to "fix" your experience.
• Boundaries are kept in both directions. I do not turn therapy into a sermon, nor a sermon into therapy. These are different forms of conversation, and blending them helps neither.

Qualifications and memberships

Education

• Master of Psychology with distinction — East-European Institute of Psychoanalysis; Moscow Psychological-Social University, 2023. Programme: psychoanalysis and counselling psychology.
• Child psychologist — East-European Institute of Psychoanalysis, 2017–2018.
• Psychoanalytic psychologist — East-European Institute of Psychoanalysis, 2019–2023. Psychodynamic approaches: psychoanalysis, Jungian analysis, symbol drama, etc., 648 hours.
• Clinical psychology, clinical psychologist — 2022–2023.
• Existential-humanistic psychology — 2023–2024.
• "Psychotherapy of Being: theory, practice, culture. Anchors in counselling" — Institute of Philosophy and Psychology "Chelovek i Mir", 2024–2025.
• "Ontological Psychoanalysis: from knowing to being and becoming" — Jack Foehl, Ph.D., International Academy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, 2026.
• Professional in-depth supervision, intermodal approach — 136 hours, 2021–2022.

Professional memberships

• Member of the Eurasian Confederation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (ECPP) since 2021.
• Full member of the All-Russian Professional Psychotherapeutic League (OPPL).
• Accredited supervisor of OPPL.
• Specialist of the Russian Psychotherapeutic Association (RPA), author of RPA-certified educational programmes.
• Mediator: specialist in mediation and alternative conflict management.

Selected publications

Full list of publications: ORCID 0009-0002-8695-6304 . Some works are indexed in RINC (eLIBRARY) and listed in the Russian state bibliographic registers (VAK). RINC ID: 1333017 · SPIN: 3482-3012.