Find what is stopping you from living your life

The question of who determines the norms and pathologies was asked by a student of the Faculty of Psychology, says Italian teacher Ferdinando Salamino. “Because we had been discussing criteria for an overall performance assessment for the previous hour and a half, her question came out of the blue.

It would seem that this was a difficult question, but in fact the answer to it is quite simple, if you get rid of the missionary intention to save everyone, always and at any cost. Here’s what I decided to answer my student: “Sorry, but if a person is happy painting turtle shells on the beach, why would he come to therapy?”

The main goal of therapy – speaking for myself – has never been to decide who is normal and who is not, or to turn “abnormal” into “normal”. Its goal is to remove obstacles that prevent the patient from living his life and are a source of suffering for him.

I don’t know how many of you have seen the film Shine, about a turning point in the life of pianist David Halfgott. It immediately becomes clear to us that he is a strange guy who stutters, sometimes goes to the stairwell for mail without panties and eats cat food while playing the piano. Personally, I don’t care about all these things. What can be done by working with him? David would stop playing the piano, give up what he passionately loved, give up his life impulse, distance himself from himself. The answers are obvious.

The world is a place where it should be comfortable for everyone who wakes up in the morning, performs certain “production” tasks, returns home and takes care of spouses and children. People who create something live measured and calm lives.

However, a place is also needed for those who close themselves in a room and write poetry or compose, now intolerable, now the most beautiful music, smoking cigarettes and drinking disgusting whiskey. Would we do the world a favor by trying to cure the depression of the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi by allowing him to go out, get married, have children? By nullifying all his desperate poetry, would we have made him better? Would Jimi Hendrix’s transformation into a sober individual capable of working from 9:00 to 17:00 be considered a therapeutic success?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not praising recklessness. What I’m trying to say is that the goal of psychology, as a science of man, is to include him, not to exclude him.

Psychotherapy as a clinical branch of this science sets itself the task of finding, together with the patient, what is normal for him, and not forcibly directing everyone along the only right path. Every time I get goosebumps when I hear from a colleague that he has set himself the goal of leading patient X to a healthier approach to one area or another of his life.

“Before you judge someone, put on his shoes and walk his path.” This principle is the basis of empathy, but at the same time, psychological intimacy is much deeper and more difficult. It means taking the other person’s point of view and seeing the possibilities and limitations from that person’s perspective. This is how, together with the patient, we begin to build a road: possible and acceptable for him, and not more “healthy” for us.