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Psychic Discoveries – Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder

Raikov [worked with] another student, Volodnya, as a nineteenth-century Russian artist listed simply as "N." Volodnya as ‘N’ considered Raikov his personal model. He dedicated his pictures to ‘my best model and friend, 1883.’

Whilst drawing, ‘N’ liked to expound his theories of art. "Would you like to publish them?" model Raikov asked.

"Of course," the boy sighed, "but they would never pass the censor."

At this juncture, another psychiatrist came into the room. "Ah," said Raikov, "here’s our censor now. I'd like you to meet him, please."

The censor-doctor extended his hand. Volodnya jumped up, putting his own hand behind his back.

"Never! Never shall I shake the hand of a tsarist censor!" Pacing around them glowering, he shouted to Raikov, "Friend of mine, drive out of here all censors!"

Raikov couldn't resist trying to introduce the high-passioned Volodnya to another student, Elena, also reincarnated for the moment as the famous ‘N.’

"N is, of course, only one person. And I am, of course, that person. Now this lady. . . she is a false face," Volodnya observed to Raikov.

Volodnya, like the others, felt he had acquired artistic talent in compressed time. As one Soviet writer put it, "The students feel as if all the spadework is behind them. They feel they've learned the techniques of drawing while reincarnated as a procession of masters - Repin, Raphael, Matisse, and others. Now they're ready to synthesize and develop their own style."

Raikov's instruction is similar to traditional art teaching, in which the student would sit with a sketch pad in a museum before the paintings of great artists - except that Raikov's ‘reincarnation’ encapsulates days into hours, years into months.

AIla flipped through her sketch pad, from semi-stick figures to a respectable portrait in three months.  Her sudden opening-up to art only took her a few hours each week.