In Andrei Malakhov’s program, Kashpirovsky did not treat anyone, he only listened to songs and sometimes sang. Photo: Russia 1 Channel
An authoritative voice, a stern look… The grandmothers with crutches almost start dancing under this look. Hundreds of people, at his order, fell to the ground, and some claimed that they felt no pain from the boiling water. Tricks? Gift? Actors game? In the 90s of the 20th century, millions of viewers waited for Anatoly Kashpirovsky’s sessions…
After his fading fame, he himself lives modestly and it turns out he has a lot of regrets. On New Year’s Day, Kashpirovsky appeared on Russian television for the first time in a long time; he was among the guests discussing good old songs. KP.RU spoke with Anatoly Mikhailovich about his former popularity, his meeting with Vanga and the main mistakes in life.
“For the entertainment of the public”
-You look wonderful for your age. What is the secret?
– I don’t look so wonderful. Probably, first of all, it’s genetics. Secondly, I have always led a sober and spartan lifestyle. I never smoked, never drank alcohol, and exercised regularly. And it still is to this day. This keeps me in good shape and gives me the opportunity to travel without feeling fatigued. Of course, it happens that I go to the doctor. I am a former athlete, I had injuries and operations. I had the first one when I was 6 or 7 years old.
– Whatever they call you: psychologist, psychic, hypnotist, magician. Which definition is closest to you?
-Who called me that? The press and the common people. And in kyiv, at an international conference, more than 200 doctors from six countries examined my work and decided to grant me the title of Doctor of Medical Sciences without defense. The State awarded me the People’s Doctor Prize of the USSR. Because? Did everyone think I was a magician, a psychic or a hypnotist? No.
Almost everyone can be a psychologist now. Three months into the course and you are a psychologist. This is ignorant. A psychologist without medical training is very scary.
Psychics… They have never existed on earth and never will exist. We are all the same: we all have five fingers, we are all hungry, we all have a certain strength… Has anyone ever met someone so special, capable of influencing other people? How to influence? With your appearance, your energy? Nobody emits energy, this is not inherent to the human population. Therefore, it is necessary to abandon this word.
Hypnosis. They put the person on the couch and start telling him that he is relaxing, that his eyelids are heavy. This is just empty talk. Some hope that in the context of these conversations something will change in a person. “You don’t want to eat, you will lose weight” – this is not hypnosis, it is verbal persuasion that has never been successful.
You say they call me a hypnotist. I did experiments on stage when I performed. But it was a suggestion. I spoke in an authoritative voice to pick flowers, for example, and many saw flowers. I say, “Funny,” a lot of people laugh. They didn’t sleep, they just obeyed, that’s all, so I stopped calling it hypnosis. It was for the entertainment of the public. They were interested, they laughed. They are entertaining moments, but nothing to benefit the cause.
Women were especially suggestible. Photo: A. GORDIEVICH/RIA Novosti
– Why then are people so willing to believe in fortune tellers, esotericists, astrologers and tarot readers?
– Because I have a narrow mind. They heard this from their grandparents and accepted and lived by this nonsense without much criticism. There are no esotericists. This is an invention of the new wise men who are filling people’s minds with this. Tarologists, numerologists: the same.
“Vanga is a deeply sick person”
– Many people put you on a par with Vanga. Tell us how your meeting went.
– To be alone with Vanga, you had to sit in another house for a good 40 minutes or an hour, while her entourage asked you about yourself, who you are. I went there. Vanga herself wanted to meet me. I was accompanied by a journalist from the Rabóchaia Tribuna newspaper. Both of her children died. As soon as we entered, Vanga immediately said: “And you had two coffins.” The journalist turned pale with fear. So Vanga, let’s talk to me and say something that doesn’t exist at all. I wanted to change my nationality (then the press wrote that Anatoly Mikhailovich had Jewish roots. – Ed.).
But I do not want to talk about that. By the way, I respect her because she is a deeply sick person. I said, “How do you feel?” Her: “Oh, no one asks me, these people tortured me.” I sat next to her and took her hand. She had a hot hand. There is a peculiarity about my body: I am hot all the time. You can warm yourself near me, such as near a stove, at any time. Her hand was just as warm.
– What do you think of his gift?
– Here is the gift from whoever organized it. Thank you for arranging that she lived with honor and respect all these years. We called each other for a while. But, you know, distance, another language – all this is difficult, so communication has faded. By the way, she died on my birthday, August 11th.
“Now I am naked as a hawk.”
– Many people think that you have been living in the United States for a long time. Where do these rumors come from?
– I have been to the United States more than 200 times. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to Poland. There I acted on television for two years, there were good programs. And then they started to show my face: I move my lips, but instead they speak Polish, in a lower voice. I asked him what this outrage was. They told me that the Russian language is not welcome among them. So I said I was leaving the program. Them: “You will lose the channel.” I say: “I am losing my channel, I may lose my life, but I will not change my language.”
The fact that I went to the United States was one of my biggest mistakes in life. I shouldn’t have gone there under any circumstances. But I took it and left. And with this it was completely crossed out.
I made a lot of mistakes in the United States. He had such a bad passion for giving. Even before the United States, I was in Chisinau and gave a four-room apartment to an aunt. So what’s wrong? I didn’t demand anything for it. In the United States I completely lost everything I had because I gave and gave. She helped her children, she copied everything from them and they had husbands, wives, etc. (see “By the way”).
Everything fell into pieces, that’s why today I’m naked as a hawk. So I don’t have any apartment in Moscow. My wife and I live in the one that the State Duma once gave me, but it is not my property. Sometimes I go to the window and see the road. I think: “People travel, what do they think, what do they know?” Then I go back to the computer. This is my entire company. Well, I also have programs that I do on social networks and on YouTube (423 thousand people subscribe to Kashpirovsky’s channel, where he conducts live broadcasts, sessions and publishes recordings of old performances. – Ed.).
– At one of his performances, as the press wrote, he met his second wife, the Czech Irina. In 2014, everyone was talking about your divorce with her and your affair with your assistant.
– I met Irina in the Czech Republic after divorcing my first wife, with whom I had two children. I took the first one I found. It was stupid. I still regret it. She didn’t support my cause, she was a stranger. And in general, Czechs are completely different people. We had nothing in common. So in 2003 I sent her back to the Czech Republic. Then she complained and complained, I felt sorry for her. She did something stupid and I returned it. But we lived separately and met once a year. Then, in 2003, the sun came to me, which is still with me now: Gulya. Now she is my official wife. No one before me laid a finger on her and we’re still together. Therefore, amateurs have no chance. My wife is an exceptional person. She speaks eight languages and there are never any conflicts or misunderstandings with her. With such an education, Gulya is a Muslim. I think she is a gift from heaven that came to me very late.
“It is impossible to carry water”
– What do you say to those who complain after the sessions that nothing worked?
– They are prisoners of deception. They don’t understand that micromovements occur in the body. They say, “I didn’t feel anything.” Do you feel your hair or nails growing? People say, “I want something visible to happen to me.” So I give you this example. He takes an acorn, plants it in the ground, and in the morning calls out, “Where is the oak tree?” But there is no oak tree. So give it time, 20-30 years will pass and there will be such an oak tree there! No, they need it now or tomorrow morning.
– You are often called a scammer and charlatan, what do you think of such accusations?
– It’s just a crowd. In relation to our work, in relation to eternity, to the molecular movement of man, they have no understanding. I forgive them.
Charlatan… I did a teleconference in kyiv with operations without anesthesia (see “There was another case”). Cuts of 45 and 40 centimeters. Is there a video? They later wrote that one of the patients was screaming in pain. If she was in pain they would have given her an injection, but she was allergic to everything. She would have died immediately or would have suffered clinical death. How is this called? Quackery? How many people got rid of allergies, heart disease and psoriasis after my sessions!
During the psychotherapist sessions, someone turned their head and someone danced. Photo: Grigory KOSTIN/RIA Novosti
– In addition to your teleconferences, everyone still remembers the water plot on television. Can you explain what it was?
– After my teleconferences, it was possible to eliminate anyone. People were tuned to the right wave and, out of inertia, would react to anyone. And what do you think? They took and organized Allan Chumak’s show as part of the “120 Minutes” program. He waved his arms there and that was it. Chumak was absolutely far from psychology, from the knowledge of man. Well, who can charge for water or cream? As? Some kind of energy, also through the screen? I had no energy. Some journalists, to make fun of me, put drums of water in front of me, which they are loading. I have never charged for water, that is a lie. From time to time they remember me along with Chumak and Yuri Longo. They are all absolute charlatans who have never done anything for humanity.
– Many people thought that after leaving television you would open your own business. Have you ever had those thoughts?
– Never! I don’t want any business. I’m not obsessed with money. My main activity is the fight against eternity.
BY THE WAY
They treated New York for snoring
In 1995, already at the peak of fame, Kashpirovsky decided to move to the United States. There he lived with two children from his first wife Valentina: a daughter and a son. In the United States, the healer’s main audience was the emigrants who followed the Soviet doctor’s magical sessions on television. He gave speeches and private consultations for them.
In 2017, Anatoly Mikhailovich even carried out an “unprecedented global remote psychological action” there, in the hall of the National restaurant. It was a nose job that promised to stop snoring in three minutes. Anyone from any corner of the world could participate. Kashpirovsky suggested that at 7:30 New York time they simply lie down and look at whatever object is in front of them. The action was tremendously popular. But it is not known for sure whether this saved anyone from snoring.
THERE WAS ANOTHER CASE
Operations without anesthesia?
Perhaps the most controversial moment in Kashpirovsky’s biography is his Moscow-kyiv teleconference in 1989. It caused a wave of controversy both in the scientific community and among ordinary people. Live, Kashpirovsky, located hundreds of kilometers away in Moscow, prepared two patients for surgery without anesthesia. Both women in kyiv underwent hernia surgery and both were allergic to painkillers. Kashpirovsky was called in to help “program” patients so they would not feel pain. Under the surgeon’s knife and with a 40 centimeter incision in her stomach, one of the women not only answered the healer’s questions, but she also sang! The operations were completed successfully.
Just a few months after the teleconference, one of the patients, Lesya Ershova, told reporters that she was in terrible pain at the time. But I didn’t want to let my idol down, so I endured it. Many doubted that the operations would be performed without anesthesia. Onlookers suspected that the surgeons were playing it safe and, just in case, injected the women with a local anesthetic.
ANOTHER OPINION
“Nowadays suggestible people go to Blinovskaya”
“Kashpirovsky was a talented psychotherapist who knew people very well,” says psychoanalyst and candidate of psychological sciences Lyudmila Polyanova. -His main audience is people susceptible to suggestion. We are talking about psychosomatics. By influencing the psyche, Kashpirovsky made sure that the person himself provoked certain reactions. This happens very often: the placebo effect, when you are given a pill that does not contain any substance and the person feels better and improves. But this is not a medicine, it is a suggestion.
Furthermore, in addition to understanding psychology, he had an attractive appearance. A little diabolical. The main category of his clients were women. In general, they very often get carried away and fall in love with men who help them. Just as patients fall in love with doctors. Because when we need help we become childish, as if we took the position of a child and fell in love with an “adult.” In this case, in that “wizard”.
Nowadays, suggestible people flock to people like Blinovskaya. She, unlike Kashpirovsky, is not a professional. But the town remained the same. They still believe in a magic wand.
HELP “KP”
Anatoly Kashpirovsky was born in 1939 in the Ukrainian village of Stavnitsa. After school, he graduated from the Vinnitsa Medical Institute and worked for 25 years in a Vinnitsa psychiatric hospital. Before becoming popular, he worked as a psychotherapist for the USSR weightlifting team and as director of the Republican and International Psychotherapy Centers in kyiv.
He first appeared on television in 1988: he presented a series of children’s programs, where he supposedly cured children of enuresis. A year later, Kashpirovsky’s sessions began to be broadcast on Central Television. His program was broadcast on Sundays every two weeks and gave him enormous popularity. In 1993, the psychotherapist became a deputy of the State Duma of Russia.
