One of the important directions of large-scale reforms carried out in ANAS in recent years is the work carried out in our country in the direction of adapting the priorities of humanitarian and social sciences to the national interests of the state and the intellectual challenges of the leading scientific schools of the world. As a result of these reforms carried out under the leadership of Academician Isa Habibbayli, President of ANAS, the research angle of the socio-anthropological scientific direction in various fields of science has been expanded, attention has been increased to the training of highly qualified personnel in this area. These reforms carried out in accordance with the scientific policy of the state created conditions for achieving tangible progress in the field of training highly qualified personnel, along with increasing scientific indicators in ANAS.

Leading researcher of the Institute of Folklore of ANAS, associate professor Safa Panah oglu Garayev was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philology on the specialty 5719.01 – “Folklore Studies” by the decision of the Higher Attestation Commission under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The first dissertation work defended in the field of psychoanalytic folklore was revealed as a result of regular research conducted by Safa Garayev for more than 10 years.

The dissertation was developed using the system of theoretical and methodological tools of psychoanalytic folklorism, formed as a socio-anthropological scientific direction, the approach to folklore as a projection phenomenon, the equivalence system that allows semantic reading of the unconscious desires of a person (collective), which are actualized in the text.

In the dissertation the psychoanalytic method was applied taking into account the peculiarities of collectivity, traditionalism and variance of folklore. The analysis found that rituals, epics, fairy tales, anecdotes, beliefs and individual folkloric images, motives and behaviors are not only an expression of the ideas of a conscious society, they also symbolically embody ideas that society does not put up for open discussion, which the collective does not directly understand.

Safa Garayev is known in our country as one of the leading experts in this field. He is the author of 7 books and about 60 scientific articles. Some of the scientific articles of the scientist were published in the Republic, others in international scientific publications. He has published 4 scientific articles in journals indexed in prestigious international databases such as Web of Science and Scopus. Safa Garayev successfully represented our country at a number of scientific conferences of the national and international level.