INTRODUCTIONrnWhile the biological approach remained at the forefront in Russian/Soviet psychiatry,several valuable theoretical approaches were developed in Russian/Soviet psychology.This development,however,did not cross the border of the psychiatric domain.The clinical implications of these psychological constructs for the psychosocial treatment of severe mental illness(SMI)were overlooked.In this article,I shall focus on psychosocial treatments for schizophrenia and explore how the corresponding data aligns with theo-retical concepts developed by Lev Vygotsky and Aleksei Leontiev.In addition,I shall briefly describe the theoretical underpin-nings of general Russian/Soviet approaches to the treatment of the mentally ill.