Psychotherapist from TV: Anatoly Kashpirovsky died

On Saturday morning, October 3, Soviet TV presenter Anatoly Kashpirovsky died at the age of 88. He was called a psychic and a hypnotist. He treated citizens of the Soviet Union with the help of television sessions, which made him famous throughout the country. Read more about the life of the famous author of "health sessions" on central TV in the Izvestia article.

What caused Kashpirovsky's death

Anatoly Kashpirovsky's death was announced to Izvestia by his director Sergey Rudykh. The media noted that the psychic's heart stopped at 6:40 a.m. in Moscow. The cause of death is called acute heart failure. It is specified that the day before his death, the TV presenter felt well and did not complain about his health.

It is known that a few months before his death, he underwent emergency surgery due to a malignant tumor — before that, Kashpirovsky complained of severe abdominal pain. Last October, he was also hospitalized due to cancer.

In September, Kashpirovsky planned to conduct treatment sessions, but they were eventually canceled, and the money for the tickets was refunded. The last time the "psychic" spoke publicly was two years ago.

Biography of Kashpirovsky

Anatoly Kashpirovsky was born on August 11, 1939 in the village of Stavnitsa in the Kamenets-Podolsk region of the Ukrainian SSR (now it is the Khmelnitsky region of Ukraine). In 1962, he graduated from the Vinnytsia Medical Institute and after that he worked in a psychiatric hospital there for more than 25 years. He said that because of his small salary, he worked part-time as a loader at night.

Kashpirovsky was also engaged in physical therapy, and for some time he was seriously interested in weightlifting and boxing. In 1987, he was appointed a psychotherapist for the USSR national weightlifting team.

He became famous in 1988. Then Kashpirovsky took up hypnosis and mass healing — and got on television. According to him, this happened thanks to an acquaintance with journalist Vladislav Listyev, who attended his speech in Moscow. He brought the future TV presenter together with Vadim Belozerov, the editor of the Vzglyad program, and so the first filming was organized in Ostankino.

Kashpirovsky became really famous after the Moscow — Kiev teleconference, during which he held a psychotherapy session with a patient of the Kiev Institute of Oncology. She underwent surgery, and Kashpirovsky remotely helped her not to feel pain. Many years later, the media reported that doctors had given the woman a small dose of anesthesia, and the patient still felt pain, but did not admit it because of the cameras.

This teleconference caused a huge stir. Anatoly Kashpirovsky said that after that he was invited to the Central Committee of the Party of the Ukrainian SSR, transferred to work in Kiev and given an apartment in the building of the central committee of the party.

In total, Kashpirovsky conducted five television shows with Kiev. He claimed to have "remotely cured" thousands of children of enuresis. The TV presenter claimed that he was "restoring the natural balance in the body," based on the fact that "experiences of happiness and sadness have some kind of material, biochemical basis," and he allegedly penetrates "into the very essence of the body and heals the body, leaving his mark there."

The period of Kashpirovsky's popularity

The peak of the TV presenter's popularity came in 1989, when the first edition of the program "Sessions of the psychotherapist Anatoly Kashpirovsky" was shown on the Central Television of the USSR. A total of six such programs were broadcast in a year, and their audience was huge: according to some estimates, about 180-200 million people watched each program across the country, according to others — about 300 million. The viewers participated in the sessions right at the screens: the "psychotherapist" gave different settings, cans and glasses of water were placed in front of the TV — thus it was "charged".

Kashpirovsky's phrase of those years has been preserved in culture: "I give the installation!", which quickly turned into parodies and jokes. The image of the therapist also became famous: black clothes, short black hair with bangs and a monotonous voice.

After gaining popularity, Anatoly Kashpirovsky went on tour throughout the country, assembling concert halls, football stadiums, and performing at enterprises. "Kashpirovsky Evenings" were organized by video salons and cinemas.

In the wake of his popularity, Anatoly Kashpirovsky even spoke at the UN headquarters in 1991, where he offered his methods for the treatment of AIDS.

Prohibition and relocation to the USA

The sessions stopped in 1993, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a special decree banning television hypnosis. However, Anatoly Kashpirovsky continued his activities, and far beyond the limits of "healing": in the same year, he was elected a deputy of the State Duma of the first convocation from the LDPR party.

In 1995, he emigrated to the United States, where he continued his psychotherapy sessions. It is known that Kashpirovsky also performed in Poland and Ukraine. In Russia in the 2000s, he appeared in various TV programs, in particular, in the program "Let them Talk" with Andrei Malakhov.

In 2006, Anatoly Kashpirovsky was found guilty under Article 6 of the Administrative Code in connection with illegal medical activities — an initiative group of Orthodox citizens filed an application against him. An examination was conducted by specialists from the Department of Psychiatry of the Chelyabinsk State Medical Academy, who recognized his hypnosis methods as harmful to mental and physical health. One of the claims, for example, was that Kashpirovsky advised people with cancer to be treated by listening to recordings of his voice.

Nevertheless, Anatoly Kashpirovsky continued to promote his treatment methods. In 2014, he toured Russia, and since 2020, he has been conducting "wellness sessions" on his own YouTube channel, claiming to be treating COVID-19 with innovative methods.

Criticism of Kashpirovsky

Anatoly Kashpirovsky insisted on the psychotherapeutic nature of his work, refused to call himself a hypnotist or psychic, and also criticized his "colleagues", in particular, the "healer" Allan Chumak.

However, his methods were regularly subjected to fair criticism. Eduard Kruglyakov, Chairman of the Russian Academy of Sciences Commission on Combating Pseudoscience and Falsification of Scientific Research, for example, called the "effects" of Kashpirovsky's treatment "almost magical healing power," faith in which "ends sadly for patients."

He was accused of profanity, the ability to play on people's fears. And the chairman of Gosteleradio at the turn of the 80s and 90s, Mikhail Nenashev, said that Anatoly Kashpirovsky and Allan Chumak were allowed on television for the sake of "consolation" during a difficult period for the inhabitants of the country.