Oleg Bakhtiyarov

Oleg Georgyevich Bakhtiyarov (Russian: Олег Георгиевич Бахтияров); born 22 January 1948 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), USSR (Russia) – scientist, psychologist; areas of research: psychology of extreme situations, conflictology, extremology, psychology of consciousness, psychonetics; known for developing the concept of deconcentration of attention.

Biography

Oleg Baktiyarov’s works are based on various practice-oriented research projects that were performed in 1981-1986 at the Science and Research Institute of Psychology in Ukraine (USSR) and in 1987-1988 at the Science and Research Institute of Material Science in AN USSR. This research was related to improving the efficiency of operators in complex, uncertain and extreme conditions.

The clients of these projects were mission-critical enterprises, such as the Ministry of Nuclear Energy and Industry of USSR, space agencies, such as NPO Molniya and military agencies, such as GRU.

The results of these research projects are described in Bakhtiyarov’s theses (see bibliography below).

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Oleg Bakhtiyarov continued to work in the same areas of psychological science, independent of government interests. With the further evolution of associated research concepts and psychotechnologies, Bakhtiyarov grouped these ideas into “psychonetics”:

“Psychonetics is an aggregate of psychotechnologies, based on the unified methodological foundation,

directed towards resolving tasks defined in a constructive manner, using exclusive properties of mind.”

Psychonetics is described in Bakhtiyarov’s monographs and articles (see bibliography below). One of the most popular psychonetical concepts is the concept of deconcentration of attention:

“Deconcentration of attention is opposite to concentration and can be interpreted as a process of dismantling

of the figures in the field of perception and transformation of the perceptual field into a uniform

(in the sense that no individual elements could be construed as a perceptual figure) background.”

Currently, Oleg Bakhtiyarov is the director of the “University of Efficient Development” in Kiev, Ukraine , which is a private organization aimed at providing basic psychonetics training. There are subsidiaries in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.

Oleg Bakhityarov is also known for his active political position. As a student in Soviet Union times, he was imprisoned for two and a half years for political reasons. During the unstable times that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, he personally participated in the armed conflicts, both as a scientist specializing in the psychology of extreme situations and as an individual expressing his active civil position.

In March 2014 he was reported to be arrested for conspiracy to storm Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Allegedly he recruited more than 200 people promising them payments up to $500 each, stocked Molotov cocktails, special ladders, baseball bats and other equipment.

Bakhtiyarov has denied both the accusation and the fact of the arrest, claiming he was brought to the SBU for a "talk" during which he was asked to leave Ukraine, which he did.