"They were scared, and some were likely scared so much so that they refused to meet me. It was two or three people, and it sort of straightened out over weeks and months, getting back to the old acceptable lines of contact. As for my former coworkers, I didn't really meet them, but when I ran into someone in town, they acted in quite a reserved and formal way. In summary, I didn't meet with much understanding or compassion in my situation. It was only in the other community, the political dissidents, that I experienced this; in fact, what else was there to do but stick together and support each other? I got into that relatively early. I would meet many people, from Dienstbier to Lis to the Němec family who would give me various printed stuff. I even got a very 'stimulating' document with advice and instructions on what to do when encountering the StB or being interrogated by them. There was this beautiful phrase intended to make us realise that we might think we were playing chess with them, but in fact the game was played on two chessboards, with them having a different chessboard than us. This was a very significant and important thing to realise - we were in no condition to outsmart them one way or another; we were on a different plane from them."
"Since we were already practicing and working, the five of us got an offer. It was after Kučera and Dosuzhkov had died. We were taking over their patients and practicing psychoanalysis, and we were invited to a congress of the International Psychoanalytical Society to be certified as analysts. It actually happened in Rome in 1989. It was a little bit problematic and weird for me because that was the year when I got my passport back for the first time, which had been taken away due to the Charter. I was uncertain as to whether they'd let me go. Well, it happened; it was still before the revolution - in August. We drove - Mikota drove - a battered old Skoda. It was a terrible ride, but it was like our graceful ride to Rome. Arriving there, we were penniless; two of us had some foreign currency but the rest of us were broke, but there we were. I think we stayed at the Marriott or Kempinski, a kind of posh hotel. They paid for everything, of course, it was their business. And there, in that big forum of several hundred people, we were actually certified and declared Czech psychoanalysts 'lege artis'. It was glorious; of course we cherished the moment and our hearts swelled with happiness and joy that finally, after so many years, even under these terrible conditions, it could all happen."
"During the war, at least from what my mother and then my grandmother told me, my maternal grandparents' situation was quite difficult and complicated. Not at first; they were able to function somehow during the Protectorate. Somewhat relevant in this context, my maternal grandfather Procházka applied for a German Reich citizenship. There was another quite significant circumstance that affected my grandparents' destiny I assume. He applied for a German Reich citizenship and, on top of that, he applied to join the Wehrmacht at a quite advanced age - 43 or 45. This, in fact, could be the reason why my grandmother was not sent to a concentration camp, because she was Jewish by origin. This is what I assume; I don't have any other explanation for that. I haven't found any proof or arguments in support of this view. Then, of course, it evolved. My grandfather was killed near Kursk, and in the post-war period, just a few months after the "liberation" of Brno by the Red Army, it so happened that my grandmother, my mother and her sister were included in that Brno transport of Germans, down to Austria."
Jiří Kocourek was born in Brno on 19 April 1948 to Hildegarda Kocourková and František Kocourek. Studying psychology at the Faculty of Arts in Brno (FF UJEP), he was drawn to depth psychology thanks to Dr. Hugo Široký. He started his career in Třebíč, moving to Prague in 1973 and taking up psychoanalyis training with Dr. Otakar Kučera. Having signed Charter 77, he lost his job as a psychologist at the District Institute of National Health (OÚNZ). He worked as a telephone operator at the Žižkov central. Having completed his psychoanalysis training, which the communist regime mocked as a „bourgeois pseudo-science“, he became one of the first psychoanalysts officially recognized by the International Psychoanalytical Association in the summer of 1989. During the Velvet Revolution, he was the spokesperson for the Civic Forum at Prague 6 OÚNZ. In the free times, he started his private psychoanalyst practice and promoted psychoanalysis by lecturing in academia, editing Freud‘s writings and founding the Institute of Applied Psychoanalysis. He lived and worked in Prague and Opočno in 2025.
