Himself a psychologist – is this possible?

“Why do we need these psychologists?” Indeed, why on earth should we share our most personal, most intimate secrets with a stranger, and even pay him for it, when the bookshelves are littered with bestsellers promising us to “discover our true self” or “get rid of hidden psychological problems” ? Isn’t it possible, having prepared well, to help yourself?

It’s not so easy, psychoanalyst Gerard Bonnet cools our ardor: “Don’t hope to become your own psychoanalyst, because for this position you need to distance yourself from yourself, which is quite difficult to do. But it is quite possible to carry out independent work if you agree to release your unconscious and work with the signs that it gives. How to do it?

Look for symptoms

This technique underlies all psychoanalysis. It was starting from introspection, or rather, from one of his dreams, which went down in history under the name “Dream about the injection of Irma”, Sigmund Freud in July 1895 brought out his theory of dreams.

We can perfectly use this technique and apply it to ourselves, using all the symptoms that the unconscious reveals to us: not only dreams, but also things that we forgot to do, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue, strange occurrences – everything that happens to us quite often.

“You need to regularly dedicate a certain time to this,” says Gerard Bonnet. – At least 3-4 times a week, best of all in the morning, barely waking up, we should remember the previous day, paying special attention to dreams, omissions, episodes that seemed strange. It is better to record in a diary everything that happens in the most free manner, thinking about associations and not worrying about style or any kind of coherence. Then we can go to work so that in the evening or the next day in the morning we can return to what we have written and calmly reflect on it in order to see the connection and meaning of events more clearly.

Между 20 и 30 годами Леон, которому сейчас 38 лет, начал тщательно записывать свои сны в тетрадку, а затем добавлять к ним свободные ассоциации, которые у него возникали. «В 26 лет со мной произошло нечто необычайное, — рассказывает он. — Я несколько раз пытался сдать экзамен на водительские права, и все напрасно. И вот однажды ночью мне приснилось, что я лечу по шоссе на красной машине и кого-то обгоняю. Обогнав во второй раз, я почувствовал необыкновенное блаженство! Я проснулся с этим сладостным ощущением. Прокручивая в голове невероятно четкий образ, я сказал себе, что могу это сделать. Как будто мое бессознательное отдало мне приказ. И спустя несколько месяцев я действительно уже ездил за рулем красной машины!»

What happened? What “click” caused such a change? This time it did not even require complex interpretation or symbolic analysis of the dreams, since Leon was satisfied with the simplest, most superficial explanation that he gave himself.

Breaking free is more important than finding an explanation

Often we are driven by a strong desire to clarify our actions, mistakes, dreams. Many psychologists consider this a mistake. This is not always necessary. Sometimes it is enough to get rid of the image, to “expel” it without trying to explain it, and the symptom disappears. Change does not happen because we think we have figured ourselves out.

The point is not to accurately interpret the signals of the unconscious, it is much more important to free it from those images that endlessly arise in our head. Our unconscious desires only to be heard. It commands us without our knowledge when it wants to send a message to our consciousness.

40-year-old Marianne believed for a long time that her nightly fears and unhappy romances were the result of a difficult relationship with her absent father: “I looked at everything through the prism of these relationships and built the same neurotic relationships with “inappropriate” men. And then one day I dreamed that my paternal grandmother, with whom I lived in my youth, stretches out her hands to me and cries. In the morning, when I was writing down the dream, the picture of our complex relationship with her suddenly became completely obvious to me. There was nothing to understand. It was a wave that rose from within, which first overwhelmed me, and then freed me.

It is useless to torment ourselves, asking ourselves whether our explanation fits this or that of our manifestation. “Freud was at first completely concentrated on the interpretation of dreams, and in the end he came to the conclusion that only the free expression of ideas is important,” remarks Gérard Bonnet. He believes that well-conducted introspection should lead to positive results. “Our mind is freed, we can get rid of a lot of symptoms, such as obsessive-compulsive behavior that affects our relationships with other people.”

Introspection Has Limits

But this exercise has its limits. Psychoanalyst Alain Vanier believes that one should not dive too deep into oneself: “We will quickly meet with obstacles and with the inevitable indulgence of ourselves. In psychoanalysis we start from the complaint, and the cure is to direct us to where it hurts, exactly where we have built barriers never to look there. This is where the crux of the problem lies.”

What is hidden in the very depths of the unconscious, what is its core? – this is exactly what our consciousness, our own “I” does not dare to face: a zone of suffering repressed in childhood, inexpressible for each of us, even for those whom life has only spoiled since then. How can you bear to go and examine your wounds, open them, touch them, press on the sore spots that we have hidden under the veil of neuroses, strange habits or delusions?

“Face to face with ourselves, we try not to see those oddities that can take us by surprise: amazing slips of the tongue, mysterious dreams. We will always find a reason not to see this – any reason will be good for this. That is why the role of a psychotherapist or psychoanalyst is so important: they help us overcome our own internal boundaries, to do what we cannot do alone, ”concludes Alain Vanier. “On the other hand,” adds Gerard Bonnet, “if we engage in introspection before, during, or even after a course of therapy, its effectiveness will be many times greater.” So self-help and a course of psychotherapy do not exclude each other, but expand our ability to work on ourselves.