Is psychology allowed to set pedagogical goals, to educate people, to teach them good things?
It seems that the question is strange, but the answer will be even more unexpected: as long as there is no such permission, as long as psychologists who set pedagogical goals for themselves expose themselves to fire.
For the past few decades, diploma and dissertations containing the word “formation” in relation to personality have been secretly banned in psychology. In humanistic ideology, it is believed that a person cannot be formed, he can only grow and develop on the basis of internal potential. And formation is an intervention in the holy of holies: the life of a free individual.
Pedagogy is saved by the fact that it brings up small children. As soon as we move on to parenting, a series of difficult questions immediately arise:
- Who gave you permission to determine where to live for a particular person? On what basis do you take upon yourself the right to determine what is bad for a person and what is good?
- When you form a person’s values, do you present all your tools so that he can evaluate and approve of them? If you influence the value and personality of a person without their knowledge and consent, do you understand that you are manipulating?
These questions are important and necessary. It’s bad when they hit on the hands.
But psychologists who are drawn to practice are drawn to practice anyway. What should they do in this situation? Two typical solutions are either to engage in pedagogy quietly, or to engage in psychotherapy openly. Because it is still possible for a psychologist to engage in psychotherapy. Because you can’t help the healthy, but you can help the sick.
When a child or an adult is already frankly ill, then the experts are called: help! Actually, practical psychology, at least in Russia, was born precisely from psychotherapeutic activity, and until now a consulting psychologist is more often called a psychotherapist.
The main choice of a practical psychologist: a psychotherapist or a psychologist-educator
In the field of practical psychology, you can work both as a consultant and as a trainer, while the main choice still remains: are you more of a psychotherapist or more of a teacher? Do you heal or do you teach? Most often today this choice is made in the direction of psychotherapy.
At first, this seems quite romantic: “I will help people in difficult situations,” soon a vision comes that the psychologist-consultant easily turns into a life service employee, hastily repairing rotting specimens.
However, every year there is a growing understanding that it is necessary to move from direct assistance to people with problems to prevention, preventing the appearance of problems. That it is necessary to deal with developmental psychology, that this is precisely the promising direction that will create a new person and a new society. A psychologist must learn to become a teacher. See →