«Epistolary solitaire relationship»

“Letters from readers and answers from a psychologist are a banal topic. What magazines do not exploit this «question-answer» role of a psychologist. Fortunately, Ekaterina Mikhailova’s column stands out against the background of other examples of the genre: numerous «simple» and «concrete» psychological comments. It is distinguished by professional accuracy, depth of answers, interest and respect for the personality of the person who, for some reason, sent a letter to the magazine.

• Do you play the role of a psychologist at work?
• What kind of psychologist are you for your loved ones?

In this new book, Ekaterina Mikhailova examines a ten-year stream of letters from readers and tries to discover recurring motifs in this chaos, build her own creative classification: “protest songs”, “report on achievements”, “complaints in the instance”, “work on mistakes”, “monologues -lamentations”… She is not too lazy to look into the letters that did not get into the magazine because of profanity, in connection with an incomprehensible request or excessive narcissism of the author. Separately, she is interested in letters written in an old-fashioned manner — «by hand». Or lays out the theme of male-female relations in epistolary solitaire.

But no matter what zone of the “world of letters” Ekaterina Mikhailova’s curiosity rushes, and after her my reader’s interest, discoveries await us everywhere, a change in the usual angle, an expansion of the context, sometimes a detective investigation of the life situation that lies behind the brief plot outlined in the letter. . Particularly impressive is the genre of multivariate answers by a psychologist, which usually remain “behind the scenes” of a real answer in a magazine: these are the various “virtual” responses to a letter from a 50-year-old man who first learned that he has an 18-year-old son.

Reading the selected answers of a psychologist from correspondence with “invisibles” brings, in addition to everyday benefits (ideas and recommendations), also a great aesthetic pleasure: Ekaterina Mikhailova brilliantly knows how to choose the main angle of view on a problem situation, reveal the essence of the conflict in a concisely stated “plot” and -humanly simple and understandable, and most importantly, respectfully and kindly write a response letter to the reader “about the main thing”.

For psychologists, the book can be an excellent tool that tells how to decipher the messages of readers and what is worth writing, and what is better to refrain from in the comments. And the rest will find in the «Psychologist for the Invisible» an abundance of valuable material for knowing themselves and others and will have the opportunity to meet with a deep and witty psychologist.