SUMMARY:

The article aspires to understand the nature of changes that had happened in psychiatry in the 1930s as a result of its competition with physiology and under the influence of Anatolii Ivanov-Smolenskii. Physiology challenged psychiatry with some old questions, such as: What role does the body play in mental illness? What place do experimental techniques occupy in psychiatry? Which clinical methods should be prioritized? Following psychiatric discussions, the author traces the shifting borders between somatic and psychiatric approaches and offers his original interpretation of the evolution of biomedical sciences. At the same time, the study of the field of psychiatry in a particular historical moment allows him to evaluate the degree of the Soviet state’s interference in science and the limits of professional autonomy of its representatives.